Northern Illinois Food Bank’s Melinda Craigs-Ingram has been getting calls from frantic families since the state announced the SNAP many have been relying on since March 2020 would be returning to pre-pandemic levels.
The news “created pandemonium, to say the least,” said Craigs-Ingram, the Geneva-based nonprofit group’s SNAP outreach manager.
SNAP is short for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal program that supplements the food budgets of needy families and is administered in Illinois by the state’s Department of Human Services.
“It caused a lot of panic,” Craigs-Ingram said. “We’ve fielded calls from (people) who are bargaining and begging. We are dealing with a variety of different emotions. … It’s a very scary time for our neighbors.”
The benefit reduction is anywhere from between $93 and $250 a month, she said, and seniors are being hit hard too. She spoke to one who said her benefit was being cut to $23 per month, in part because Social Security recipients received an increase in benefits this year, she said.
When she gets calls, she lets people vent. She can hear the anger, panic and hopelessness in their voices, Craigs-Ingram said.
“We have a lot of calls where people start off crying,” she said. “They want us to understand where they are coming from. … As they talk about their despair, we constantly acknowledge how they are feeling. We want to take away that feeling of hopelessness, that feeling of ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.'”
The Northern Illinois Food Bank helps fill the gaps for people who don’t have enough income to pay for food in addition to covering their other basic expenses as well as assisting food pantries and other organizations that also try to meet the need.
The post-pandemic inflation has driven up the cost of almost every commoditiy and service, and has forced more people to seek help covering mounting expenses, experts say.
Craigs-Ingram’s SNAP team is trained to look for ways families can get more benefits and to make sure people know where the food pantries are in their area, she said.
Northern Illinois Food Bank is part of a network of 29 pantries in Kane County but with a 40% increase in demand, the pantries are struggling too, she said.
“This is a system already taxed. It will only be stressed further,” Craigs-Ingram said.
Food for Greater Elgin’s Executive Director Michael Montgomery knows firsthand how much pressure food pantries are feeling.
They’ve gone from assisting 400 families a week in 2021 to 700 in 2022, and now they’re up to 800, he said.
Typically they experience seasonal swings but last year the numbers consistently increased, Montgomery said. “We used to get 20 new guests a week pre-COVID. The first week of this year we had 53 new guests,” he said.
And there’s the “SNAP gap” — the difference between what people receive in federal assistance and what they actually need financially to feed their families — which is not about to get worse with the benefits reduction, he said.
“SNAP doesn’t cover everything,” Montgomery said. “It’s not enough. Income levels are too low and it’s not enough money, so they are coming to us and other food pantries.”
Escalating food prices are taking a toll as well, he said. Eggs, for example, are a good source of protein and a staple they’ve always provided, he said, but when the cost went to $3,000 in December, they had to scratch them off the list.
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“We have to give food out,” Montgomery said. “We’re deficit spending to meet the needs. We can’t pass increased costs onto our consumers. It doesn’t work that way. We are trying to do more and more with less and less.”
“It’s been a sprint ever since COVID. It’s been one thing after another,” he said. “But you keep running.”
Anyone needing help with SNAP benefits can contact the Northern Illinois Food Bank at 844-600-7627 or [email protected].
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.