On a recent Thursday evening, the line of cars waiting to pick up food at Redemptorist Social Services Center in midtown snaked through the parking lot, down a driveway and into the street.
Demand for free food is soaring across Kansas City, as job cuts increase, food inflation remains persistently high and federal food assistance is slashed by the Trump administration.
Julie McCaw, executive director at Redemptorist, called the situation “alarming.” Families with working parents, senior citizens and people who simply cannot find work increasingly are turning to food pantries like hers for help.
But as declining federal aid and uncertainty surrounding tariffs stifle donations of excess food from manufacturers, hunger relief groups are struggling to keep up. Now they are bracing for proposed federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which would drive even more people to food pantries and meal sites.
“One of our volunteers is a retired physician,” McCaw said, as volunteers loaded fruit, potatoes and other produce into the waiting cars that rolled through the agency’s parking lot. “His biggest fear is that we will watch people die out of hunger. They will be malnourished and they will die of hunger.”
Redemptorist’s pantry at the intersection of Linwood Boulevard and Wyandotte Street has seen traffic nearly double in the past month, going from about 40 families a day to nearly 80. The number of families coming through the organization’s drive-thru distribution points on evenings after work has reached an average of 250 in Clay County and 450 in midtown.
The growing need and sense of alarm is common among Kansas City nonprofits working to provide food to people who can’t afford it.
Harvesters, the area’s food bank, which supplies food to pantries and feeding sites in Missouri and Kansas, reported 2.19 million visits from households at their partner agencies in the year ending March 31, up from 1.98 million the previous year. Yet, thanks to federal cuts that have already occurred, the food bank’s shelves have 30% less food than normal.
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million in government food commodities that would have gone to food banks. That meant 41,000 cases of meat, cheese, milk and other food staples that would have been shipped to Harvesters disappeared, including canceled orders for food already loaded on trucks.
And other cuts to USDA programs, like one that gave schools and food banks money to buy produce and meat from local farmers, have also had an impact.
Cutting SNAP benefits called devastating
Previous federal funding cuts have been devastating, said Elizabeth Keever, Harvesters’ chief resource officer. But if Congress passes President Donald Trump’s budget, which would eliminate an estimated $267 billion from SNAP over 10 years, reducing monthly enrollment by 3 million people, the situation could quickly become desperate.
“Food banks like us across the country are looking at the reality and saying, ‘You know, this is an unsustainable direction,’” Keever said.
SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, provide low-income people on average about $6 per person a day to buy groceries. People who qualify for the program receive an EBT card that can be used just like a debit card.
SNAP spending also helps sustain grocery stores, especially in rural areas. And it stretches food assistance further than direct donations from food pantries or meal sites. Experts said SNAP can pay for nine meals for every one meal a food pantry can provide.
The program is largely funded with federal dollars, although states pay some of the cost to administer it. Federal cuts would shift the burden to states. But that’s a burden many would be unlikely to meet.
Missouri distributed $1.5 billion in total SNAP benefits in 2024, while Kansas distributed $408 million.
The Trump spending bill, which passed the House by only one vote and is now moving through the Senate, also threatens cuts of more than $700 billion to Medicaid, the program that pays for health and long-term care for low income Americans.
If both SNAP benefits and Medicaid are cut, “folks are going to have to make really challenging decisions,” Keever said.
“I’m afraid of what it’s going to mean for chronic health for generations,” she said. “If these cuts go through … people will choose lower-cost foods, and they will have less health insurance to be able to manage their health care needs.”
Summer bump and summer SNAP benefits
According to data from Feeding America, hunger is the highest it’s been in a decade in the Kansas City area. One in seven people who live in Harvesters’ 27-county region — almost 375,000 people — are dealing with food insecurity, including one in six children.
Major events have caused food aid needs to increase in recent years. For example, the COVID pandemic sent many people home from work and left them without income to buy food. And the Great Recession a decade earlier also increased food needs.
But in those times, the government stepped up with more aid, like assistance that families received during the COVID pandemic to help them buy groceries.
“Right now, we’re having a combination of challenges that are being experienced by our neighbors who are facing food insecurity,” Keever said. “And there is no enhanced relief. If anything there’s been divestment of any sort of relief programs.”
Threatened cuts and dwindling foods going to pantries and food sites come at a time when children are getting out of school for the summer. That means families need even more help to make up for school breakfasts and lunches that disappear over summer break.
There is some good news. Both Missouri and Kansas are offering SUN Bucks, a SNAP program that gives families an extra $120 per child to buy groceries over the summer. Both states offered the program last year, but the aid came late in the summer or not until fall.
Kansas began distributing this year’s benefits May 28, according to the Department of Children and Families website, but families not automatically enrolled have until Aug. 29 to apply. Missouri families have until Aug. 31 to apply for the funds, if they aren’t getting them automatically.
Last year, many eligible families didn’t sign up.
David Rubel, an education policy consultant in New York, said states need to get the word out about this summer’s program. Through Freedom of Information Act requests to state agencies, Rubel found that only 2.9% of Kansas children and 18.3% of Missouri children without automatic benefits applied for the summer aid. That left potentially millions of dollars unclaimed and returned to Washington, he said.
Getting creative with less
Shanita McAfee-Bryant, chef at Nourish KC, which runs a community kitchen that serves hot meals five days a week, has been seeing more children and senior citizens visiting the organization’s community kitchen for daily meals.
Children getting out of school, seniors losing other food access and more people out of work in the Kansas City area are all reasons she gives to explain the increased need.
Like other hunger outreach groups, she’s also noticing reduced resources available to meet that need. In April, Nourish KC received 8,000 pounds of food coming from the USDA through Harvesters. But that dropped to 4,000 pounds in May, a reflection of Harvesters’ declining deliveries.
That commodity food aid had been the organization’s largest source of ingredients. Now, McAfee-Bryant is relying more on donations from Whole Foods and other grocery stores that pass along produce they can no longer sell.
“We are getting really really creative with the food we’re getting,” she said.
That means more vegetarian meals and less meat protein. Now, she might serve a salad as an entree, something she would never have done when federal food donations were flowing in.
“We take our responsibility to the community very seriously,” she said. “They rely on us to be there. They expect us to be there.”
The organization is trying to raise donations from the community to cover the current gap. But that’s a tall order, McAfee-Bryant said. Other community leaders are telling her to keep going and “continue business as usual.” But that’s getting harder every day.
“Sysco and Restaurant Depot don’t take ‘business as usual’ as a payment,” she said. “I need money.”
‘They’re killing Grandma’
Senior citizens are also increasingly at risk of hunger, said Janet Baker, executive director of KC Shepherd’s Center.
The organization’s Meals on Wheels program, funded by a federal grant that is distributed by the Mid-America Regional Council, has drastically scaled back due to federal funding cuts. Today, KC Shepherd’s Center can only deliver meals to 600 clients. Two years ago, they were helping 1,200 clients.
Baker said budget hawks looking for spending cuts need to look at the bigger picture before cutting funding for programs like Meals on Wheels and SNAP, which also serves seniors.
“It costs us less than $3,000 a year to provide a daily well check and a hot meal to a hungry senior,” Baker said. “That’s less than the cost of a single day in the hospital. And yet malnutrition, which is prevalent in seniors, is one of the leading causes of hospitalization. You can prevent the expense. You can prevent the health crisis by simply feeding people.”
Baker worries that senior citizens in Kansas City who are already struggling to afford medication, rent and food will end up living on the street if more food aid is eliminated.
“You’re just killing people,” she said. “They’re killing people. They’re killing Grandma. I don’t even understand the point.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
