* 8/25/25 - Crains Forum - How federal changes to SNAP will put pressure on Illinois' food system..........
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Sep 2, 2025, 7:31:16 PM (3 days ago) Sep 2
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Chicago weighing its options for public food marketson Illinois' food system
Food banks and pantries will see even greater demand
Before the new law, the Greater Chicago Food Depository was seeing an increased
More than 1.8 million people in Illinois rely on SNAP to help buy food
15% of Illinois' population uses the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to purchase food. Substantive changes to those benefits and related farm subsidies in the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act are expected to ripple through Illinois' economy
Nearly 1 in 5 Illinois SNAP participants are expected to lose benefits
Stricter federal food assistance work requirements are projected to cut benefits to 360,000 Illinoisans
Before the new law, the Greater Chicago Food Depository was seeing an increased
need for food assistance. These new changes are expected to further increase the need.
August 25, 2025
On a steamy July afternoon, West Garfield Park residents lined up at the Above & Beyond Free Food Pantry on South Pulaski Road. Moms with kids, seniors and young men brought bags to fill. Inside, volunteers handed out packages of Danish pastry and cookies “rescued” from local supermarkets, along with frozen chicken and cans of tuna and beans.
Since opening during the pandemic in 2021, the pantry’s customer traffic has increased by more than 25% a year, and that’s before changes to the federal food stamp program take effect as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law in July. Executive Director Ken Cozzi is bracing for a surge in demand as the pantry prepares to move to a bigger space a few blocks away. “We’re a big pantry, but we only have so many refrigerators and freezers,” he says.
The Illinois Department of Human Services estimates that 360,000 people are at risk of losing eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which Illinois recipients access via electronic benefit transfer cards called Link. That’s largely due to stricter work requirements that will soon be imposed. The result, food experts say, will be greater food insecurity and stress on the distribution system. SNAP, once known as food stamps, is the nation’s most effective anti-poverty program for younger people, reducing extreme poverty by more than 50%, advocates say. It’s also a powerful economic multiplier.
Every dollar in SNAP benefits spent helps generate an estimated $1.50 in economic activity, according to Feeding America. SNAP feeds more than 1.8 million people in the state, with an average monthly benefit of about $360 per household.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also shifts costs to states, estimated at $800 million for Illinois. “This changes the rules at a time when working families are struggling to afford groceries and leads to more people going hungry,” Grace Hou, deputy Illinois governor for health and human services, said at a press briefing last month. It creates more red tape under the guise of efficiency with the cost being borne by Illinois taxpayers, she added.
The impact of it all could send shock waves through the state's entire food ecosystem, impacting not just those who purchase food with SNAP dollars but food banks and pantries, grocers and small farmers — and the state’s budget. Illinois issued $4.7 billion in SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2025, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The 800 pantries served by the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the area’s food bank, have seen escalating demand in recent years, due in part to painful price increases for commodities such as eggs, beef and coffee. Anxiety over food prices isn’t limited to low-income Americans. The vast majority of adults in the U.S. are at least somewhat stressed about the cost of groceries, according to a poll released this month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But 64% of the lowest-income Americans, those with a household income of less than $30,000 a year, say the cost of groceries is a major source of stress.
With the SNAP cuts, Chicago-area food banks and pantries are scrambling to prepare for even more demand.
“We are seeing less government food coming in, and we have just witnessed a dismantling of the safety net,” says Kate Maehr, CEO of the Food Depository. “More people will be turning to us, and we are trying hard to figure out how can we get more food.”
Maehr says she worries about the effect on donors and supporters who are being pulled in different directions to support needs, from social services to the arts. However generous, philanthropy can’t fill the gaps caused by the government funding cuts, experts say.
On the supply side, U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that subsidize farmers for goods that are channeled to food banks and pantries have been eliminated or are at risk of being cut. That will add to the strain. All these cuts will have an outsized effect along the distribution chain. SNAP dollars are spent at retail food stores, which purchase from food manufacturers, wholesalers and farmers, who pay truckers and warehouses.
Some grocers depend on SNAP for a third to as much as half of their revenue. SNAP dollars for food free up household income for other essentials, from diapers and clothes to rent and utility bills.
Farmers markets will also feel the pain, as many accept SNAP and a statewide program enables recipients to double their buying power and farmers to sell more fruits and vegetables. Less SNAP is likely to lead price-conscious shoppers to forgo fruit and vegetables in favor of less nutritious but calorie-dense food such as pizza and hot dogs, experts say.
“Wherever SNAP is spent, whether it’s at a corner store, a farmers market, or a larger grocery store, those dollars do not evaporate. They circulate and they feed local economies,” says Connie Spreen, executive director of the nonprofit Experimental Station in Hyde Park, which runs the Link Match program. The program doubles the value of Link purchases at farmers markets by providing matching currency redeemable at the market for fruits and vegetables, according to the program’s website.
Pantries anticipating demand increases
The SNAP cuts included in July’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that directly affect consumers come in the form of more stringent work rules. Groups that are no longer exempt from the requirement to work 20 hours a week include veterans, homeless people, parents whose youngest child is 14 or older, and adults up to age 64.
Advocates say these rules miss the circumstances of people in the workforce, such as retail employees with unpredictable schedules, substitute teachers and seasonal workers. Grandparents younger than 64 may be caring for young children.
With costs being shifted to the state, starting in October 2026, Illinois must assume 75% of the administrative burden, up from 50% previously. That’s estimated at $108 million annually by the Department of Human Services. Then, in October 2027, Illinois picks up 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits, estimated at $705 million. That amount will vary with the state’s error rate — how often it makes mistakes in paying recipients too much or too little.
Food banks and pantries are at the center of the storm. For every meal made possible by the Food Depository, SNAP provides nine, Maehr says, adding, “We were never designed to fill that void. We cannot become nine times bigger.” She says she’s particularly worried about what the cuts will do to families with children, “one of the most vulnerable populations.” The food bank is anticipating a demand surge in November, often the busiest month for pantries.
Adding to the stress on the food system are the migrants that poured into the city over the past three years, especially refugees and asylum seekers from Venezuela. Spanish speakers represent half of the clients at the Ignatian Mission Center Food Pantry in Rogers Park, says Liam Ford, executive director of the Ignatian Mission Center. The pantry, which had been shuttered after its parish closed, reopened in 2023 and in two years has doubled the number of people served to 28,000 annually.
“When we started, a large portion of our clients were in the five different migrant shelters within a mile of us,” Ford says. “Now we have a lot of migrants who've settled in the neighborhood long term.” Like Cozzi at Above & Beyond in West Garfield Park, Ford says the pantry is constrained by its storage capacity. One option is adding a walk-in cooler — an expensive solution that could be funded with donor help and could enable the pantry to serve 25% more people, he says.
Supermarkets and smaller food retailers are girding for a hit. Selling groceries is a notoriously low-margin business, and independent operators who don’t have the scale of a chain are at risk. “It doesn’t take much to push a grocery store into insolvency,” says Rob Karr, CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
At Pete’s Hometown Grocery in downstate Troy, 25 miles northeast of St. Louis, SNAP accounts for about 30% of sales, says owner Chad Patel. That amount can make the difference in employing enough staff and providing raises. With shoppers increasingly price conscious, he contemplates having to purchase more inexpensive private-label goods, which won’t help profitability.
“Families, if they have to pick and choose, will prioritize with cheap foods," he says. “When I see somebody having to do that, it's heartbreaking.”
In the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, Forty Acres Fresh Market owner Liz Abunaw says the reporting requirements for recipients will prove burdensome and cause them to fall out of the system. “SNAP helps people eat and SNAP is revenue,” says Abunaw, who operates the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market, an initiative of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the nonprofit Austin Coming Together. Abunaw also is working to open a full-service supermarket on Chicago Avenue.
“If people have less money to spend, regardless of the method of payment, that’s never a good thing,” she says. “Because SNAP can only be spent on food, we’re not competing with other necessities for those dollars.”
Fewer dollars means that shoppers are likely to skip the produce at farmers markets, which typically sells at a premium compared to fruits and vegetables at chain supermarkets. Funds from the Link Match program, available at 125 markets in the state, are designated only for fresh fruit and vegetables, says Spreen of Experimental Station. That frees regular SNAP dollars for other goods at the markets such as eggs and cheese. The program has great health benefits, but when people are short of money, they turn to pasta, she says. “They don’t eat more carrots.”
Getting local food into the hands of consumers at affordable prices without government programs is incredibly hard, says Sarah Franz, executive director of the Chicago-based Healing Soils Foundation, which raises funds to support small Midwest farmers using organic and regenerative practices.
“As these cuts take place, the focus is going to be on feeding people, as it should be,” she says. “But it's my worry that the farmers will be left behind. A pantry manager will want to feed the greatest number of people with the least amount of money and won’t have the luxury of purchasing goods at a premium from local farmers.”
An attempt to boost new farmers
The USDA eliminated two funds that enabled food banks and pantries to buy goods from local farmers: Local Food Purchase Assistance, or LFPA, and Local Food for Schools, LFS.
Chicago Public Schools has been using the funds, which expire in January, to provide fresh fruit as bonuses to standard lunch offerings, a spokesman says. The USDA also eliminated its 30-year-old SNAP-Ed program, which provided low-income people with education on nutrition and obesity prevention. About 220 SNAP-Ed staff members will lose their jobs, says Jennifer McCaffrey, assistant dean for the family and consumer sciences programs at University of Illinois Extension, the outreach arm of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that provides educational programs and resources to the public.
The Illinois Equitable Access Towards Sustainable Systems, or IL-EATS, is the state program funded by the LFPA. It aimed to expand local production of fruit and vegetables. In Illinois, more than 80% of the farmland is devoted to corn and soybeans used mostly for ethanol and animal feed. That requires supermarket chains and wholesalers to import produce from other farm states or countries.
IL-EATS was launched at the tail end of the pandemic and funded in two rounds for a total of $28 million; a third round was canceled earlier this year. Fifteen food organizations purchased goods from local farmers and worked with pantries on distribution. The program targeted farmers in disadvantaged groups, who received a “fair market” price above wholesale.
“A lot of our farmers were new, and they sold primarily at farmers markets and roadside stands,” says Makala Bach, outreach associate at University of Illinois Extension. “This was a program that allowed them to try scaling up and get paid to do that instead of taking on all the risk that can come with changing your business structure. They were learning how to invoice, package and follow safety standards.”
Of the program’s 176 farmers, nearly 60% were in business less than 10 years and included Black- and women-owned businesses. Some farm in the city, such as The Urban Canopy, which grows eggplants and peppers on raised beds in a vacant lot in Auburn Gresham.
Last year, The Urban Canopy earned $43,000 from its LFPA farm sales, a significant portion of its revenue, says farm manager Alice Cusick. But more than the money, LFPA solved a distribution problem. It enabled the company to ship much of its output to a single customer, the mutual aid organization Food Sovereignty Coalition, which distributed the food to pantries. “We didn't have to coordinate packing and delivering produce for multiple organizations or businesses,” she says. Otherwise, The Urban Canopy markets and delivers to a variety of retail customers, a labor-intensive proposition.
The program paid The Urban Canopy the higher fair market rate, which allowed it to increase staff wages and invest in supplies. “We added about 12 beds in order to increase the volume of food we were growing,” Cusick says.
The loss of LFPA has stung because it enabled food banks and pantries to access foods that weren’t previously affordable, says Steve Ericson, executive director of Feeding Illinois, the association of Feeding America food banks in the state. The state will continue its Farm to Food Bank program, which connects farmers to food banks on a much smaller scale, he says.
Another worry is the Emergency Food Assistance Program known as TEFAP, which is at risk of being cut when the next farm bill is negotiated. Under this program the USDA contracts with farmers and arranges shipments from farms and processing plants to food banks. It was started in 1981 as a way to dispose of surplus food but has evolved to be a staple in the supply chain, especially for small, rural food banks. It accounts for more than a quarter of the food distributed by the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
In March the Illinois Department of Human Services saw some cancellations in orders being placed by the USDA in Illinois. No reason was given, a spokesperson says. Since then all orders have been fulfilled as scheduled, she says.
With cuts that will pare consumer buying power and food supplies to pantries, and with so many social demands on philanthropy, who will pick up the slack?
“We’ve already asked a lot of our community,” says the Food Depository’s Maehr. “And now we're going to have to ask again as these changes come forward. And I believe we live in the most extraordinary city where people are generous and they care about their neighbors. But I also know that many of the people who support us also are facing changes. Inflation is impacting them. The uncertainty in the economy is affecting them and the volatility in the employment sector is affecting them.”
By Judith Crown
August 25, 2025
On a steamy July afternoon, West Garfield Park residents lined up at the Above & Beyond Free Food Pantry on South Pulaski Road. Moms with kids, seniors and young men brought bags to fill. Inside, volunteers handed out packages of Danish pastry and cookies “rescued” from local supermarkets, along with frozen chicken and cans of tuna and beans.
Since opening during the pandemic in 2021, the pantry’s customer traffic has increased by more than 25% a year, and that’s before changes to the federal food stamp program take effect as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law in July. Executive Director Ken Cozzi is bracing for a surge in demand as the pantry prepares to move to a bigger space a few blocks away. “We’re a big pantry, but we only have so many refrigerators and freezers,” he says.
The Illinois Department of Human Services estimates that 360,000 people are at risk of losing eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which Illinois recipients access via electronic benefit transfer cards called Link. That’s largely due to stricter work requirements that will soon be imposed. The result, food experts say, will be greater food insecurity and stress on the distribution system. SNAP, once known as food stamps, is the nation’s most effective anti-poverty program for younger people, reducing extreme poverty by more than 50%, advocates say. It’s also a powerful economic multiplier.
Every dollar in SNAP benefits spent helps generate an estimated $1.50 in economic activity, according to Feeding America. SNAP feeds more than 1.8 million people in the state, with an average monthly benefit of about $360 per household.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also shifts costs to states, estimated at $800 million for Illinois. “This changes the rules at a time when working families are struggling to afford groceries and leads to more people going hungry,” Grace Hou, deputy Illinois governor for health and human services, said at a press briefing last month. It creates more red tape under the guise of efficiency with the cost being borne by Illinois taxpayers, she added.
The impact of it all could send shock waves through the state's entire food ecosystem, impacting not just those who purchase food with SNAP dollars but food banks and pantries, grocers and small farmers — and the state’s budget. Illinois issued $4.7 billion in SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2025, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.
The 800 pantries served by the Greater Chicago Food Depository, the area’s food bank, have seen escalating demand in recent years, due in part to painful price increases for commodities such as eggs, beef and coffee. Anxiety over food prices isn’t limited to low-income Americans. The vast majority of adults in the U.S. are at least somewhat stressed about the cost of groceries, according to a poll released this month by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But 64% of the lowest-income Americans, those with a household income of less than $30,000 a year, say the cost of groceries is a major source of stress.
With the SNAP cuts, Chicago-area food banks and pantries are scrambling to prepare for even more demand.
“We are seeing less government food coming in, and we have just witnessed a dismantling of the safety net,” says Kate Maehr, CEO of the Food Depository. “More people will be turning to us, and we are trying hard to figure out how can we get more food.”
Maehr says she worries about the effect on donors and supporters who are being pulled in different directions to support needs, from social services to the arts. However generous, philanthropy can’t fill the gaps caused by the government funding cuts, experts say.
On the supply side, U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that subsidize farmers for goods that are channeled to food banks and pantries have been eliminated or are at risk of being cut. That will add to the strain. All these cuts will have an outsized effect along the distribution chain. SNAP dollars are spent at retail food stores, which purchase from food manufacturers, wholesalers and farmers, who pay truckers and warehouses.
Some grocers depend on SNAP for a third to as much as half of their revenue. SNAP dollars for food free up household income for other essentials, from diapers and clothes to rent and utility bills.
Farmers markets will also feel the pain, as many accept SNAP and a statewide program enables recipients to double their buying power and farmers to sell more fruits and vegetables. Less SNAP is likely to lead price-conscious shoppers to forgo fruit and vegetables in favor of less nutritious but calorie-dense food such as pizza and hot dogs, experts say.
“Wherever SNAP is spent, whether it’s at a corner store, a farmers market, or a larger grocery store, those dollars do not evaporate. They circulate and they feed local economies,” says Connie Spreen, executive director of the nonprofit Experimental Station in Hyde Park, which runs the Link Match program. The program doubles the value of Link purchases at farmers markets by providing matching currency redeemable at the market for fruits and vegetables, according to the program’s website.
Pantries anticipating demand increases
The SNAP cuts included in July’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that directly affect consumers come in the form of more stringent work rules. Groups that are no longer exempt from the requirement to work 20 hours a week include veterans, homeless people, parents whose youngest child is 14 or older, and adults up to age 64.
Advocates say these rules miss the circumstances of people in the workforce, such as retail employees with unpredictable schedules, substitute teachers and seasonal workers. Grandparents younger than 64 may be caring for young children.
With costs being shifted to the state, starting in October 2026, Illinois must assume 75% of the administrative burden, up from 50% previously. That’s estimated at $108 million annually by the Department of Human Services. Then, in October 2027, Illinois picks up 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits, estimated at $705 million. That amount will vary with the state’s error rate — how often it makes mistakes in paying recipients too much or too little.
Food banks and pantries are at the center of the storm. For every meal made possible by the Food Depository, SNAP provides nine, Maehr says, adding, “We were never designed to fill that void. We cannot become nine times bigger.” She says she’s particularly worried about what the cuts will do to families with children, “one of the most vulnerable populations.” The food bank is anticipating a demand surge in November, often the busiest month for pantries.
Adding to the stress on the food system are the migrants that poured into the city over the past three years, especially refugees and asylum seekers from Venezuela. Spanish speakers represent half of the clients at the Ignatian Mission Center Food Pantry in Rogers Park, says Liam Ford, executive director of the Ignatian Mission Center. The pantry, which had been shuttered after its parish closed, reopened in 2023 and in two years has doubled the number of people served to 28,000 annually.
“When we started, a large portion of our clients were in the five different migrant shelters within a mile of us,” Ford says. “Now we have a lot of migrants who've settled in the neighborhood long term.” Like Cozzi at Above & Beyond in West Garfield Park, Ford says the pantry is constrained by its storage capacity. One option is adding a walk-in cooler — an expensive solution that could be funded with donor help and could enable the pantry to serve 25% more people, he says.
Supermarkets and smaller food retailers are girding for a hit. Selling groceries is a notoriously low-margin business, and independent operators who don’t have the scale of a chain are at risk. “It doesn’t take much to push a grocery store into insolvency,” says Rob Karr, CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
At Pete’s Hometown Grocery in downstate Troy, 25 miles northeast of St. Louis, SNAP accounts for about 30% of sales, says owner Chad Patel. That amount can make the difference in employing enough staff and providing raises. With shoppers increasingly price conscious, he contemplates having to purchase more inexpensive private-label goods, which won’t help profitability.
“Families, if they have to pick and choose, will prioritize with cheap foods," he says. “When I see somebody having to do that, it's heartbreaking.”
In the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, Forty Acres Fresh Market owner Liz Abunaw says the reporting requirements for recipients will prove burdensome and cause them to fall out of the system. “SNAP helps people eat and SNAP is revenue,” says Abunaw, who operates the Austin Town Hall Farmers Market, an initiative of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events and the nonprofit Austin Coming Together. Abunaw also is working to open a full-service supermarket on Chicago Avenue.
“If people have less money to spend, regardless of the method of payment, that’s never a good thing,” she says. “Because SNAP can only be spent on food, we’re not competing with other necessities for those dollars.”
Fewer dollars means that shoppers are likely to skip the produce at farmers markets, which typically sells at a premium compared to fruits and vegetables at chain supermarkets. Funds from the Link Match program, available at 125 markets in the state, are designated only for fresh fruit and vegetables, says Spreen of Experimental Station. That frees regular SNAP dollars for other goods at the markets such as eggs and cheese. The program has great health benefits, but when people are short of money, they turn to pasta, she says. “They don’t eat more carrots.”
Getting local food into the hands of consumers at affordable prices without government programs is incredibly hard, says Sarah Franz, executive director of the Chicago-based Healing Soils Foundation, which raises funds to support small Midwest farmers using organic and regenerative practices.
“As these cuts take place, the focus is going to be on feeding people, as it should be,” she says. “But it's my worry that the farmers will be left behind. A pantry manager will want to feed the greatest number of people with the least amount of money and won’t have the luxury of purchasing goods at a premium from local farmers.”
An attempt to boost new farmers
The USDA eliminated two funds that enabled food banks and pantries to buy goods from local farmers: Local Food Purchase Assistance, or LFPA, and Local Food for Schools, LFS.
Chicago Public Schools has been using the funds, which expire in January, to provide fresh fruit as bonuses to standard lunch offerings, a spokesman says. The USDA also eliminated its 30-year-old SNAP-Ed program, which provided low-income people with education on nutrition and obesity prevention. About 220 SNAP-Ed staff members will lose their jobs, says Jennifer McCaffrey, assistant dean for the family and consumer sciences programs at University of Illinois Extension, the outreach arm of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that provides educational programs and resources to the public.
The Illinois Equitable Access Towards Sustainable Systems, or IL-EATS, is the state program funded by the LFPA. It aimed to expand local production of fruit and vegetables. In Illinois, more than 80% of the farmland is devoted to corn and soybeans used mostly for ethanol and animal feed. That requires supermarket chains and wholesalers to import produce from other farm states or countries.
IL-EATS was launched at the tail end of the pandemic and funded in two rounds for a total of $28 million; a third round was canceled earlier this year. Fifteen food organizations purchased goods from local farmers and worked with pantries on distribution. The program targeted farmers in disadvantaged groups, who received a “fair market” price above wholesale.
“A lot of our farmers were new, and they sold primarily at farmers markets and roadside stands,” says Makala Bach, outreach associate at University of Illinois Extension. “This was a program that allowed them to try scaling up and get paid to do that instead of taking on all the risk that can come with changing your business structure. They were learning how to invoice, package and follow safety standards.”
Of the program’s 176 farmers, nearly 60% were in business less than 10 years and included Black- and women-owned businesses. Some farm in the city, such as The Urban Canopy, which grows eggplants and peppers on raised beds in a vacant lot in Auburn Gresham.
Last year, The Urban Canopy earned $43,000 from its LFPA farm sales, a significant portion of its revenue, says farm manager Alice Cusick. But more than the money, LFPA solved a distribution problem. It enabled the company to ship much of its output to a single customer, the mutual aid organization Food Sovereignty Coalition, which distributed the food to pantries. “We didn't have to coordinate packing and delivering produce for multiple organizations or businesses,” she says. Otherwise, The Urban Canopy markets and delivers to a variety of retail customers, a labor-intensive proposition.
The program paid The Urban Canopy the higher fair market rate, which allowed it to increase staff wages and invest in supplies. “We added about 12 beds in order to increase the volume of food we were growing,” Cusick says.
The loss of LFPA has stung because it enabled food banks and pantries to access foods that weren’t previously affordable, says Steve Ericson, executive director of Feeding Illinois, the association of Feeding America food banks in the state. The state will continue its Farm to Food Bank program, which connects farmers to food banks on a much smaller scale, he says.
Another worry is the Emergency Food Assistance Program known as TEFAP, which is at risk of being cut when the next farm bill is negotiated. Under this program the USDA contracts with farmers and arranges shipments from farms and processing plants to food banks. It was started in 1981 as a way to dispose of surplus food but has evolved to be a staple in the supply chain, especially for small, rural food banks. It accounts for more than a quarter of the food distributed by the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
In March the Illinois Department of Human Services saw some cancellations in orders being placed by the USDA in Illinois. No reason was given, a spokesperson says. Since then all orders have been fulfilled as scheduled, she says.
With cuts that will pare consumer buying power and food supplies to pantries, and with so many social demands on philanthropy, who will pick up the slack?
“We’ve already asked a lot of our community,” says the Food Depository’s Maehr. “And now we're going to have to ask again as these changes come forward. And I believe we live in the most extraordinary city where people are generous and they care about their neighbors. But I also know that many of the people who support us also are facing changes. Inflation is impacting them. The uncertainty in the economy is affecting them and the volatility in the employment sector is affecting them.”
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