Government has reopened but Chicago area’s hunger crisis is far from over – Chicago Tribune

Hunger has hit Chicago and its suburbs particularly hard recently.
a few weeks.

And it will only get worse.

During the first half of November, unpaid federal workers, SNAP recipients denied benefits, and immigrants too afraid to venture out to work swelled the already long lines of desperate people seeking help at food pantries in Chicago and northern Illinois.

The Food Depository of Greater Chicago and Northern Illinois
Food Bank, two nonprofit organizations that provide food to
local food pantries, rushed to meet a rapid increase in demand.

“Food insecurity has been a problem for a long time,” Man-
Yee Lee, director of communications for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

The recent government shutdown, she said, “has exacerbated the
problem, showing everyone what happens when you turn off
a vital resource like SNAP (the federal government service
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which is an essential
lifeline for 1.9 million people in Illinois.

The crisis of recent weeks, she added, also served as a
glimpse of much worse things to come.

The recently passed federal “Big Beautiful Bill” contains new SNAP eligibility restrictions, she said, and the expectation that states will pick up some of the cost of the program.

“It’s going to get harder and harder” for low-income people to get
benefits, starting in December, Lee said. “A lot of people are
at the risk of being excluded from the program.

The closure was temporary, Lee said. The new changes are
not.

“We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people
potentially losing benefits. We are very concerned about what
this will make our network of 840 food pantries,
kitchens and shelters throughout Cook County,” Lee said.

Likewise, the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which distributes
food to pantries and shelters in 13 northern counties
Illinois is also concerned about the coming crisis.

“Now that SNAP is reactivated, there is this misconception that
the need won’t be as great,” said Colleen Ahearn, Chief
head of philanthropy at NIFB. But even before the recent
crisis, the food bank was facing a $3 million to $4 million cut in federal funding, she said.

Now, because of upcoming cuts to SNAP, she added: “We are
anticipating the need to continue to increase.

The Food Depository, which stocks food pantries in Chicago and
Suburban Cook County saw a 38% increase in visits to sponsored food pantries compared to the first week of October, Lee said.

The organization responded by opening six temporary ones on Saturday
emergency distribution sites in areas where there is a high
concentration of SNAP recipients.

On Nov. 1, it distributed 1,700 boxes of peanut butter, soup, canned fruit and other essentials in two hours, Lee said.

More than a quarter of the boxes went to first-time visitors.
A week later, Lee said: “We have expanded the response to 10
sites and served more than 2,500 people in two hours.

Even after the shutdown ended, demand continued
SNAP recipients were waiting for their cards to be reloaded. On November 15,
the depot distributed 300 to 600 emergency food boxes at each of its nine temporary sites.

Each box, Lee said, represents a household in need.

Similarly, the food bank, which serves many Chicago-area suburbs, saw a 26% increase in attendance across its entire network of 300 branches.
pantry during the first two weeks of November, compared to
the previous month. As of November 17, there were almost 400%
increase in searches on the bank’s online food search site, Ahearn
said.

The bank also saw a 190% increase in November on its online site.
ordering service, Ahearn said.

Emergency mobile pop-up sites at Elgin Community College and
Joliet Junior College was flooded, she said.

“We were ready to distribute 750 boxes”, but around 1,000
people showed up in Elgin, Ahearn said.

“When we ran out of food boxes, we provided gift cards.
we ran out of it, we had to turn people away,” she said.

The need, she added, is not unprecedented, but the shortfall
East.

Ahearn said there has been a similar increase in inquiries and visits.
during COVID but, at the time, the food bank also saw a
increased government funding to meet this demand.

“Now we are seeing a decrease in resources” and an increase
needed, she said.

The bank is seeking more private donations and grants to fill
the gap, she said.

At the Food Depository, Lee said, retailers, manufacturers and
producers are taking on a larger role by donating food that has been
discontinued, has minor cosmetic imperfections, is about to “sell
before” or has underweight packaging.

“We save food that these suppliers could otherwise
throw away,” she said.

Additional food comes from USDA and donations from
public.

In the 2025 financial year, Lee said: “we raised £46.5 million
of food” to help feed “1 in 5 families in the Chicago metro area
area facing food insecurity.

As we approach the holidays, a time when hunger seems
more severe and the well-off will perhaps be more inclined to think about
those who don’t have it, Lee said: “We believe that food is a basic human right. »

Get help

If you need food and live in Cook County, go to Greater
Chicago Food Depository website to find a food pantry near you.
If you live in Will, DuPage, Kankakee, Kane, Lake, Kendall, McHenry, Grundy, Stephenson, Ogle, Boone, Dekalb or Winnebago counties, visit the Northern Illinois Food Bank website to find a food pantry near you.

Give help

If you’re lucky and want to help, go to either website and
make a donation, sign up for monthly automatic donations,
become a volunteer or, the next time you are at
supermarket, buy two and donate the second.

Donna Vickroy is an award-winning journalist, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be contacted at donnavickroy4@gmail.com.