These pantries are well stocked with altruism

Four hundred and seventy-eight children went to the Ozaukee Nonprofit Center in Grafton on Aug. 8, and the kids left with backpacks full of notebooks, pens, rulers, Crayons and other school supplies, even shoes to wear to school—all free.

That was the happy result of the Back-to-School Fair held by the Ozaukee Food Alliance. The event, remarkable for its unconditional generosity, made it easier for families to fit the cost of getting their children ready for a new school year into stressed budgets, but it also served as a telling example of the evolving role of community food pantries in filling gaps in the safety net for people facing financial hardship.

Images of destitute Americans waiting in long lines for a serving of soup and some bread to take home during the Great Depression don’t apply to today’s food pantries. That is not to say the desperately hungry are no longer with us. Volunteers at Ozaukee County’s food pantries—Ozaukee Food Alliance, The Food Pantry Inc. and Family Sharing of Ozaukee—will tell you they see clients who depend on the food they distribute for their next meal.

But the beneficiaries of today’s food pantries are mainly families and individuals whose incomes fall short of the minimum needed to meet the rising living costs of food, shelter and transportation. The Back-to-School Fair, though not really about food, was another way to help families meet those needs.

Counterintuitively in these times that appear prosperous with relatively low unemployment and surging personal wealth for the highest-income classes, the need for food pantries is growing. Community food assistance efforts have to do more because the federal government is doing less. Four million Americans have lost food benefits since Congress passed the deceptively named Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.

The bill set more stringent work requirements for people to qualify for food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and requires states to pay more of the cost of the program.

New restrictions require people up to 64 years old to work a minimum of 20 hours per week to qualify for the $188 monthly food benefit unless they are disabled or caring for young children.

The legislation sets more complicated documentation requirements, which states are required to enforce under the SNAP program. In Kansas, qualifying for food benefits requires filling out a 30-page application with 200 questions.

About 10% of SNAP recipients have been dropped from the program since the changes took effect.

This is happening at a time when the New York Federal Reserve Bank reported “a remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower and middle-income households and households with young children.”

The SNAP changes also require states to pay 75% of the program’s administrative costs, up from 50%, and face financial penalties for failure to meet stringent new federal reporting requirements. Some states are expected to cut back food benefits as a result.

A bill signed by Gov. Tony Evers in April gave the Wisconsin Department of Health Services $72 million from the state budget to meet the first wave of increased federal food cost-sharing demands, but legislation is needed to appropriate more funding to sustain the efforts of this state’s SNAP partner called FoodShare.

FoodShare serves 700,000 Wisconsin residents in all 72 counties.

In Wisconsin, 155 food pantries in 88 cities play a critical role in aiding people who face food insecurity, whether they qualify for government benefits or not. The pantries in Port Washington, Saukville and Grafton are modern-day iterations of a historic form of charity, working efficiently with food banks that collect surplus food products and with their own networks of grocery store and private donors to distribute the makings of healthy meals to hundreds of families and individuals in convenient settings respectful of the dignity of their needy clients.

Beyond their direct benefit to recipients, these institutions uplift their communities as outlets for the altruism of their many volunteers and private and corporate donors.

Thank goodness they’re here.