A crowd of about 20 veterans gathered around a tent and chatted excitedly as a pair of volunteers grilled up hot dogs and handed out chips on a hot and sunny day.
Some tried to cling to whatever shade they could get by standing next to an adjacent building. Others decided to forgo the shade as they waited expectantly for a bite to eat. Many more veterans were inside, in line for commissary at the Veterans Community Project’s outreach building.
The Kansas City-based nonprofit working to address veteran homelessness and other issues sees an average of about 150 veterans facing food insecurity come through their commissary each month. Frank Smith Jr III, a Marine veteran the nonprofit has worked with for three years, says events like commissary and other services provided by the nonprofit a lifeline.
When Smith first showed up, his daughter was just starting college and money was tight.
“When you go to the grocery store, you have a budget, and budgets only goes so far,” Smith said. “These people here take your burdens and they pick ‘em up and carry them with you. They don't just send you out.”
According to the Blue Star Families Military Family Lifestyle Survey, 15% of responding Missouri military-connected families reported visiting a food pantry or a military food distribution within the past year. In the same period, 20% reported that the food they bought wasn’t enough and they lacked money to buy more several months of the year, while 19% reported low or very low food security. That’s more than the 11% of households reporting food insecurity nationally.
According to Military Family Advisory Network surveys, food insecurity nationally has increased from one in eight military and veteran families in 2019 to one in five in 2023.
With Fort Leavenworth nearby and Fort Riley and the McConnell and Whiteman Air Force bases all within a three-hour drive, the metro draws a sizeable population of veterans and current military families.
Organizations like Veterans Community Project have a large population to serve, many with issues accessing food.
A unique dilemma
Food insecurity isn’t unique to veteran or active military families, but they face additional complications that lead to higher rates than in civilian households.
Ryan Brennan, a USAA DEPLOY food insecurity fellow who worked on the Blue Star Families survey, said the biggest challenges are spouse employment, childcare options and relocations.
“Military families move on average every two to three years,” Brennan said. ”You may have a two-income family, but when you move, the spouse is always having to find a new job and new child care options,” Brennan said.
A rise in remote works has helped, but moving to a new state still brings challenges for maintaining these jobs.
Relocations are also often costly. While the military will help cover much of the cost, families usually spend thousands out of pocket to cover unreimbursed expenses. Paying for food on top of those costs can strain their budgets.
Brennan said he heard from veterans who ran out of groceries before payday and had to use credit to purchase more. Others point to rising grocery prices limiting how much food they could buy.
Federal food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can also make a big difference for veterans and military families, but not everyone is aware of the program — and many don't qualify.
In some cases, it’s because the government counts a soldier's housing allowance as income, pushing them above the eligibility line.
Shannon Razsadin, CEO of the Military Family Advisory Network, said there’s a lot of confusion around benefits. Basic housing allowance might impact SNAP eligibility, but she said most are eligible for the Women, Infants and Children food assistance program.
Even then, there are complications.
“WIC is a state-run program, and you're moving every two and a half years — it creates this constant restart,” Razsadin said. “Families have to re-enroll, and there’s this gap where unfortunately people have to dig into their savings. It’s a compounding situation.”
Razsadin said those facing food insecurity are usually junior enlisted — the lowest pay grade — or mid-level enlisted.
Military benefits also depend on a variety of factors like type of service, length of service and discharge status, so many fall out of range to access some services. That’s where Vincent Morales, co-founder of Veterans Community Project, and his team come in.
“When you're talking about food insecurity, it's about quality food, not just about food insecurity,” Morales said. “A lot of our individuals don’t even have the desire or the capacity just to get up in the morning and cook an egg, right?”
Morales, who was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan defusing explosives, said the mindset of those who’ve been on the front lines isn’t usually geared towards eating, but rather toward the mission at hand. At some points in his deployment, he weighed less than 100 pounds.
“The veteran maybe isn’t always thinking about food, isn’t worried about eating, and that does trickle down to cost of living decisions where there aren’t always resources to acquire good chow,” he said.
Enlisted active-duty family respondents more often report low or very low food security, 27%, in comparison to their officer counterparts, at 4%.
Providing some relief
The Blue Star Families survey proposed that SNAP calculations exclude the basic housing allowance. But still, some wouldn’t meet federal requirements.
To fill in the gap for those who don’t qualify, Veterans Community Project welcomes people with any sort of military connection to come to their outreach building for a monthly commissary on the fourth Wednesday of every month.
There, people can get all their food essentials, hygiene items, clothes and more, all free of charge.
Veterans Community project is almost entirely funded by private donations, save for a VA grant to help prevent veteran suicide and a grant from the Missouri Veterans Commissioners.
Both grants were scrutinized to make sure it didn’t interrupt or affect them serving who they want, how they want.
“How would I like to be looked at and treated? Am I a line item or am I an individual and a person?” Morales said. “We do not pursue any funding with limitation if it allows us not to serve our brothers and sisters in the way that is best for that veteran.”
Veterans Community Project’s central program is its tiny homes community. Veterans are 50 percent more likely to become homeless than other Americans.
The group aims to provide each veteran with a home of their own and wraparound support services, like two weeks' worth of food when they move in. Morales says they also offer classes to help residents with their mental and physical health.
“I think specifically for our program, veterans in general, we talk about the stress, the tempo, that we operate in on a regular basis,” he said. “What we've attempted to do here, and what we have done here, is we've created those healthy eating habits.”
On the other side of the state line, Monica Bassett runs Stronghold Food Pantry. In the past year, Stronghold has distributed five thousand pounds of food in the Leavenworth and Lansing communities and seventy thousand pounds in total.
In Kansas, about seven percent of the state’s veteran population lives in poverty, but Bassett says not enough people are aware of the extent or severity of the food security issue.
That lack of awareness trickles down to the quality of care being offered.
“It’s one thing to just get a hand up of pantry food,” Bassett said. “Iit’s a completely different thing when they make us feel supported, or welcome, or seen, or appreciated, because we’re human and we want that human interaction and we want that feeling of worth.”
She says people should take this to heart and volunteer or help where they can.
