But even after the shutdown, it isn’t expected to last long. Federal funding for food assistance programs is still lower than in previous years, at the same time that food prices continue to climb for food pantries and their patrons alike.
Montgomery County has a food insecurity rate of 15.9%, according to Feeding America. This represents more than 85,000 local people who do not know where their next meal will come from.
Among them is Retay Ham, a 73-year-old retired veteran who uses Belmont Church’s pantry in Dayton on a monthly basis.
“It’s very hard,” said Ham, who served in the U.S. Air Force as a civil engineer for 10 years — “the best move” Ham said she’s made. The septuagenarian lives on a fixed income and often walks to her local pantry.
Ham said the cost of living has gone up significantly: what was once a $500 per month rental decades ago has shot up to $1,600 monthly. Ham said a fixed income makes this a difficult expense to cover. Add the cost of food to that, and her budget is stretched thin.
“I look for things that are repackaged, that have the price marked down,” she said of her shopping. “But you can’t always get enough.”
Food pantries themselves are facing the same pressures.
“Just like the families we serve, we are impacted by the rising cost of food, making it more expensive to purchase fresh staples and other items we don’t receive through other channels. At the same time, we are working hard to meet rising demand as more families turn to us for food assistance,” said Amber Wright, marketing and advocacy manager at Foodbank Inc.
Hunger impacts people of all backgrounds. Roughly 35% of households served by the food bank have children, according to the food bank. Another 16% contain adults older than 60.
Growing need
Foodbank Inc. has more than 100 partner organizations that distribute food to hungry families. Local pantry coordinators who work with Foodbank Inc. are reporting that they’re seeing more new faces in recent months than they have seen all year.
“We are fielding a lot more calls to our office and messages on our social media from people who have never used the charitable food assistance network, asking about how our services work and where they can go to get food,” Wright said.
Fundraising is a major revenue stream for food banks. Roughly 75% of the money that comes to the food bank is raised by the public through efforts like Valley Food Relief. Every dollar raised through the Valley Food Relief program goes to the food bank’s wholesale food budget. Each dollar raised funds four meals at Foodbank Inc.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Foodbank Inc. officials say that over the past two months, attendance at their mobile pantry locations throughout the organization’s service area has increased by 40 to 60 families.
On Wednesday, cars lined up near Vandalia Recreation Center as a team of Foodbank Inc. volunteers loaded cars with fresh fruit, bread and even some pumpkins. Patrons ranged from young couples to retirees living on fixed incomes.
Volunteer Paul Kerregan said he’s been helping his region’s food bank for years, and hungry families are abundant.
“They’re out there by the thousands in the Dayton area, you just don’t see them,” he said.
‘It breaks your heart’
Rick Robertson said Five Loaves and Two Fish Food Pantry at Spaulding Road Church of God in Riverside has seen its patron population double in recent months. Since September, the pantry has seen at least 10 new families per week.
Last week, it served 40 families by providing nearly 120 meals’ worth of supplies.
“That’s becoming the new — I don’t want to use the word normal, because there’s nothing normal about this — but that’s becoming our number right now,” Robertson said.
Patrons in recent weeks have included several employees impacted by the federal shutdown; one local dad told Robertson that he’s commuting to Columbus daily for a job he’s not currently being paid to do.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
But Robertson has also noticed an uptick in families coming in with four to five children.
“When you get on a personal basis with these families, and they bring their kids and talk about their kids, you see the concern is not so much on themselves. It’s on their children,” Robertson said. “And it breaks your heart.”
Wright said hunger has an impact on every aspect of life: work, education, health and development.
“When you haven’t eaten, you are not showing up as your best self for your family, for your employer, or for the overall community. If we want a strong workforce, we need to ensure everyone has their basic needs met,” Wright said. “If we want to grow as a society, that will only happen when people can show up and concentrate on the tasks at hand, instead of trying to ignore hunger pains and questioning where their next meal will come from.”
Federal programs
Joree Novotny, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said this uptick in need is happening at a time when food banks are facing both federal and state budget cuts. One USDA program that connected farmers with food banks to produce more than 4 million pounds of food last year was defunded during federal budget cuts.
More than 110,000 men, women and children received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in October in Montgomery, Greene, Miami and Preble counties, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The Big Beautiful Bill Act that was signed by President Donald Trump this summer included $186 billion in reductions to SNAP over the next 10 years through changes to its framework. The federal budget extends SNAP work requirements to more Americans than ever before — with several of those changes expected to come into effect over the next few years.
Most “able-bodied” adults, as described in federal law, will need to work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week or participate in training programs to keep their benefits. For decades, adults had to work until age 54 to qualify for SNAP unless they were a parent with dependents, but the working age to stay in the program was raised to 64. Only parents with children younger than 14 are exempt from the requirement.
Any impact to SNAP is an impact to a community’s food security network, food bank officials say. Roughly half of food bank patrons are also SNAP recipients. This summer saw less support at the state level to purchase food and less supply from USDA programs that support food banks.
“When we came into the start of the shutdown and pressure on families, we had less surplus supply. Our reserves are already much more limited than what we would prefer,” Novotny said.
When the government shutdown spread into November, Ohioans who use SNAP saw a disruption in their benefits. Furloughed federal workers, too, were supported through 8 pallets of emergency food boxes at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Wright said.
‘It’s just not enough’
Kathy Batts, who directs the pantry at Belmont Church in Dayton, said her pantry doesn’t know what to expect moving through the rest of this year and into the next.
“The current situation is a little different than what we’ve dealt with,” she said. “We’re hearing about the loss of jobs. We’re hearing about senior citizens living on Social Security only, and it’s just not enough with the price of groceries.”
Growth among pantry patronage began well before the government shutdown. Since the past six months, the pantry has seen a gradual increase in families and senior citizens seeking help. The small pantry averages roughly 60 families per month.
Dozens of residents filed into the Smithville Road church’s pantry on a Saturday morning to collect necessities from shelves — canned goods, meat, bread and other ingredients. Another group linked to the church, called Loaves of Light, prepares hot meals for people coming to the pantry to take home as they’re leaving with their groceries. The group also has other efforts to support people experiencing homelessness.
Although several patrons did not wish to be named by this news outlet, they said pantries play a critical role in the community.
“I don’t know what I’d do without them,” one local man said of Belmont Church’s pantry volunteers.
Ham, the retired veteran, told this news outlet that she wants to see government leaders alleviate pressure on Americans.
“I hope the politicians we have in office do better for the hungry, people who are starving. It’s a moving situation with rent and all that. It’s really bad,” Ham said. “It’s sad. We don’t take care of our own.”
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