After he finishes mowing the lawn for the United Methodist Church in Tinley Park, the landscape worker enters the building, heads to the basement and picks up a box of food.
“Because his job isn’t enough to keep his family going,” said Ed Pluchar, director of the Tinley Park Food Pantry.
The worker is indicative of a growing trend of people who are employed yet unable to feed their families in this tough economic environment.
A perfect storm of rising prices and decreasing federal benefits, while wages remain stagnant, has caused traffic at local food pantries to jump dramatically this year.
“When I took over a few years ago,” Pluchar said, “we were servicing about 40 or 50 families a month. Now we’re doing close to 180 to 200.”
Man-Yee Lee, spokesperson for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which provides food to the Tinley pantry as well as 850 other pantries and soup kitchens across Chicago and suburban Cook County, said, “Food insecurity is widespread. It’s urgent and it’s worsening.”
A survey conducted in September by the National Opinion and Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago found that, “One in three Chicago households, 36%, currently don’t have consistent access to enough food,” Lee said.
Families with children are especially vulnerable, with nearly half reporting they are food insecure, she said.
According to the report (www.chicagosfoodbank.org/2026-hunger-in-chicago-report), the numbers are “the highest we’ve recorded in our 47-year history,” Lee said.
Since the height of the pandemic in 2021, she said, “when we thought things couldn’t get worse,” food prices have increased 22%.
At the same time, she said, rents have gone up 31% in the Chicago metro area.
The combination of low wages and high cost of living “leaves many households just one bill away from deep hardship,” Lee said.
“We also found that food insecurity is forcing painful tradeoffs,” she said, as 41% report having delayed, reduced or skipped one payment in order to meet basic needs.
Tariffs and the war with Iran have led to higher prices, while passage of last summer’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has resulted in cuts to the nation’s food assistance program.
Since those cuts went into effect, SNAP enrollment in Cook County has decreased by 26%, Lee said. From July 2025 to July 2026, 224,000 people in Cook and 460,000 across Illinois have lost access to the nation’s hunger relief program, she said.
The situation is just as worrisome at the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which runs its own pantries and supplies food to 900 other pantries in 13 Northern Illinois counties outside of Cook, including DuPage, Kendall, Will and Kankakee.
The food bank currently services 465,000 across its region, said Colleen Ahearn, chief philanthropy and marketing officer. Of that number, “137,000 of are children. In Northern Illinois, that translates to 1 in 9 adults and 1 in 7 children.”
Ahearn said, “When we first learned about SNAP and Medicaid cuts last year, we thought we’d see an additional 100,000 neighbors each month. Instead, we saw neighbors coming more often. We’re thinking those who’ve been hit in the past are just getting hit harder.
“They’re making tough decisions: food or gas, medical bills or food?” she said.
“We’re no longer seeing a surge of need followed by decline like we used to as people got back on their feet,” Ahearn said. “Now, it’s a sustained high.”
Among the pantries that receive food for distribution from the food bank is Food For Greater Elgin.
“In the last 12 months, we have given out 5 million pounds of food but retrieved 4 million pounds. That leaves a gap of 1 million pounds of food,” said Andres Diez, the pantry’s CEO.
The facility was able to meet the need thanks to its inventory base and operating efficiency, he said. “But it’s not sustainable.”
Diez said, “So many people who come here are living on the edge — 20% are seniors on a fixed income. All it takes is car trouble or a medical bill to drive them to us.”
Cuts to SNAP, he said, caused an increase of 150% in pantry traffic.
“We are able to meet the need because we have tremendous capacity” and a large volunteer force, Diez said.
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But for many other pantries, the rise in need has new problems.
GCFD’s Lee said pantry and soup kitchen partners order food from the depository, which sends trucks out on 75 routes six days a week.
“A lot of these pantries are small operations, church basements, corner areas, run by volunteers. And so the issue becomes how much food can they accept and store. Most pantries want proteins and fresh produce and that requires refrigeration,” Lee said.
Lack of sufficient cold storage is a huge problem.
At the pantry in Tinley Park, Pluchar said, “We rent space from the Methodist Church in downtown Tinley Park. It was fine when we had 40 families. Now we have grown in need, and in need of cold storage capacity.”
One of the pantry’s refrigerators recently went out, he said. “We’re waiting to see if Greater Chicago can help us replace it or come up with plan B.”
Both GCFD and NIFB are looking into whether grant money can be secured to help the smaller pantries meet refrigeration needs.
Meanwhile, Pluchar, who is a deacon at St. Julie’s Parish across town, has been able to use that church’s refrigerator until the problem can be solved.
At Loaves and Fishes pantry in Naperville, a campaign is underway to raise $15 million to increase food assistance and supportive services, spokesperson Joni Wiltz said.
“As food insecurity continues to rise, many pantries face challenges with having enough space,” she said. “We’re inviting other pantries to use available warehouse space at our hub to store food at no cost, giving them access to additional storage and refrigeration when they need it.
“By sharing resources and working together,” Wiltz said, “we can strengthen our local food assistance network and reach more people in need.”
So far, GCFD and NIFB have been able to meet the demands that community-based pantries place upon them thanks to the benevolence of donors and volunteers.
But GCFD’s Lee said, “We cannot do this alone. Yes, we are here in times of need, and we encourage people in need to seek out a local pantry, but we cannot be a sustainable source of food for people. We also need SNAP benefits to exist side by side with us.”
Food insecurity reflects a broader economic insecurity, Lee said, not a lack of effort.
“Most adults in food-insecure households are either working (56%) or unable to work due to age (11%) or disability (12%),” Lee said.
The best ways to help, she said, is donate money or food, volunteer at a depository or local pantry, and be an advocate for change.
“Send messages to federal leaders to reverse those cuts,” Lee said. “Because the effects are devastating.”
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at [email protected].