Cheryl Davis pulled up to Trinity Church in Florissant on Tuesday evening in her minivan with her pregnant daughter-in-law to grab a box of groceries for her family.
“It’s hard out here. People are not getting food stamps. People are losing their jobs. People should still be able to eat,” said the mother of four adult children as she waited in line for nearly two hours. “I’m going to make sure I stay in line to get what they got. Whatever it takes for my kids and grandchildren.”
Food insecurity like Davis’ is deepening in the St. Louis area as a record-breaking federal government shutdown disrupts the SNAP program that allows low-income families to buy food, straining local food banks and families already on the edge.
As the shutdown nears the end of week five, the Trump administration approved only half of November’s SNAP benefit, after a federal judge ordered the government to continue payments. In Missouri, 655,000 residents depend on SNAP benefits, including more than 47,000 households in St. Louis County. Nationally, 42 million people rely on the program.
Cities and nonprofits have gone back to court to try to force the administration to pay the full SNAP benefit, not just half, for November, The New York Times reported.
At food pantries across the region, demand has surged as furloughed federal employees join the growing number of residents struggling to afford basic groceries. Organizations such as Empower North County and the St. Louis Area Foodbank report upticks in visits and calls for assistance.
Since 2019, Empower North County has partnered with Trinity Church and the St. Louis Food Bank each month to distribute food to the community from 6:30-8 p.m. The earliest car arrived at 3:15 p.m. for Tuesday night’s drive-thru. With eight pallets of food to distribute, they handed out boxes that contained yogurt, potatoes, trail mix, cabbage, miscellaneous snack bags and dry goods.
Many didn’t make it through the line before there was little left to give, said Melissa Fitzgerald of Empower North County.
She said people have been impacted by the shutdown, but many of the people she has encountered work, but still don’t have enough to feed themselves or their families.
“This isn’t ‘I’m not doing the work.’ ‘I’m lazy.’ ‘I don’t have a job.’ Many of them, they’re working. They’re working during the day. They’re coming from hospital jobs. They’re coming from hourly paid jobs and after work coming to wait in line at our monthly distributions,” she said.
Tuesday night’s total households served saw a 78.5% increase from the average number of households served in one night.
A 79-year-old retired veteran from Florissant, who wanted to be identified as “Dave,” didn’t think he’d be in a position to need food assistance. After 50 years of service in special forces, he lives on a fixed income.
“Food is so high-priced. I can’t afford it. People are out of work and food stamps are gone. It’s just a horrible thing,” said Dave, sporting a Vietnam veteran hat. “I don’t know what those who are on a low Social Security budget are doing. This is causing tremendous pain.”
Trinity Church Pastor Danny Quanstrom says North County is “pretty diverse” and the people he’s seen come through the drive-thru food pantry represents that diversity: “Old, white, Black, young and everything in between,” he said.
Quanstrom said he’s talked to people whose family members work at Boeing and are still on strike after three months and people furloughed from the Department of Defense who are not getting paid.
“I have talked to veterans who are sad that though they gave their lives for the country, they are not receiving enough to sustain them right now,” Quanstrom said.
He stresses the importance of making sure the food distribution was set up with dignity to the people in mind.
“If we’re helping them, we want to see them as whole persons,” he said. “They are worthy of dignity. They’re worthy of belonging. They’re worthy of agency.”