Sandra Iannone has been volunteering at the West Suburban Community Pantry for close to a decade. She helps register new clients, which typically includes “a few clients a day, maybe 10 or 15 a week.”
“I was there for COVID, which I thought would be the ultimate all-time high,” she said.
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On Saturday, Iannone registered more than 30 people, the most she has ever signed up in a single day.
“I was astounded,” she said of the number of people seeking help at the Woodridge-based pantry, which serves DuPage and Will counties.
With the federal government shutdown moving into its sixth week, food pantries are feeling the strain as families are starting to be cut off from benefits from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), which ended Saturday and is to be partially reinstated after two judges ruled the government must use contingency funds to keep the program running.
However, confusion over the program continues, with President Donald Trump suggesting Tuesday on Truth Social that he would continue to withhold those benefits, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later saying the administration is “fully complying with the court order,” multiple news outlets reported.
SNAP serves about one in eight Americans at a cost of more than $8 billion per month nationally. About 1.9 million people in Illinois rely on SNAP, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services. In DuPage County, there are more than 67,000 recipients and in Will County, the number is more than 74,000.
With the shutdown dragging on, local pantries are scrambling to ensure they can provide enough to fill the gap so people can feed their families.
Loaves & Fishes
“Many of the people calling in are moms with children who are worried about how to feed their families,” said Jackie Alvarez, client services coordinator with Loaves & Fishes Community Services.
One mother of four called Loaves & Fishes on Saturday morning in tears, worried about how she would feed her family without SNAP, Alvarez said. The woman rode her bike to the Loaves & Fishes’ pantry in Naperville so she could register as a new client and get the food and diapers she needed.
“We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of new clients coming to Loaves & Fishes for assistance over the past week, and we’re anticipating continued high numbers,” said Megan Lynch, the nonprofit’s executive vice president for advancement.
Loaves & Fishes serves residents in DuPage, Will, Kendall and Kane counties. Of that number, about 220,000 receive SNAP benefits.
From Oct. 26 to Nov. 3, the agency registered about 700 new client households, Lynch said. The average client family size is 3.5 people, which translates to “about 2,500 people registered in just the last week,” Lynch said.
Prior to the shutdown, they were already seeing high numbers of people seeking food assistance, which Lynch attributed to the higher cost of living. The organization was serving 10,000 people each week, triple the number of people they had in 2022.
“This (shutdown) is at a moment in time where food pantries across the board are feeling maxed out, and the charitable food system can’t stand in the gap of a program like SNAP that’s designed to assist families,” Lynch said.
West Suburban Community Pantry
When Iannone works her shift leading families into the shopping area at West Suburban Community Pantry, the interactions are usually brief.
“They say, ‘hi,’ they say, ‘thank you,’ and they shop,” she said.
That was not the case Saturday, when clients new to the pantry were more upfront about their situation because of the SNAP freeze.
“One lady even said her daughter had moved in with her because her daughter lost SNAP and now both of them are going to have to go to the pantry,” Iannone said.
West Suburban also saw a spike in clients registering for their services.
“Last week at our three distribution days we had about 120 new families, totaling 330 individuals,” pantry CEO Maeven Sipes said. “To put that in context, for the first three weeks of October we saw about 150 new families, so we almost matched that amount in one week.”
The organization is managing the surge amid client fears of federal immigration activity. Before the SNAP cuts, more than two dozen families said they were afraid to visit the pantry, she said. Since then, the pantry expanded its delivery options, aided by DoorDash, which is waiving delivery fees for some food banks and food pantries this month
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.“Prior to the SNAP cuts, we were only offering deliveries to specific households that had been identified as ‘couldn’t visit the pantry’ and our senior home delivery program which is about 40 seniors,” Sipes said. “Now we are offering about 200 delivery slots each week in November.”
Still, pivoting to delivery comes with its own increases in cost.
“We’re still incurring additional costs by trying to add those DoorDash options on there,” Sipes said. “We’re using a little bit more staff time to run those distributions. We’ve got, obviously, more food that’s going out. We have to get more boxes for that.”
How to help
Both West Suburban and Loaves & Fishes said one of the best ways to help is through a direct financial donation. Making donations to local food drives also helps.
Naperville City Councilman Ashfaq Syed, who sits on Loaves & Fishes’ Board of Directors, is organizing a food drive for the organization that will last until Nov. 9. Drop-off sites include Arwa Yemeni Coffee, Byrd’s Hot Chicken, Pure Green, Hungry Belly and Royal Food Court.
Multiple Indian-American and Hindu-American organizations are also hosting their annual SewaDiwali food drive in the Chicago area. The food drive runs until Nov. 10 and those interested in donating can visit SewaDiwali.org to find Naperville-based distribution sites.
Those interested in supporting Loaves & Fishes or West Suburban Community Pantry can visit their websites at www.loaves-fishes.org and wscpantry.org.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.