Food Bank Lines in Swing States Growing Longer

(Dreamstime)

Lines at food banks are growing longer in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to NBC News.

“We have never seen this level of need in the 43 years we have been serving this community. It is significantly higher than during COVID and has pressed us beyond our capacity,” Ken Estelle, president of Feeding America West Michigan, told the news outlet.

“We’ve just seen this drumbeat increase every month of more people and more people.”

The report comes just nine days before Election Day.

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in the crucial swing state of Michigan, where they are essentially tied. Neither candidate is ahead by even a single percentage point.

Both candidates have said they will address voters’ economic concerns. Harris in August announced a sweeping set of economic proposals meant to cut taxes and lower the cost of groceries, housing, and other essentials for many Americans.

Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years, but food prices are still 21% above where they were three years ago.

A Labor Department report this week showed that nearly all of July’s inflation reflected higher rental prices and other housing costs, a trend that, according to real-time data, is easing. As a result, housing costs should rise more slowly in the coming months, contributing to lower inflation.

Trump has vowed to lower food prices by imposing tariffs on foreign countries and expanding the domestic energy supply, NewsNation reported.

Joe Arthur, who runs the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, told NBC News the current problem is “a hunger crisis.”

“The need that we’re seeing in our localities is actually as high as it was at the peak of the pandemic, yet there are less resources for those families today.”

In Wisconsin, Friends with Food has gone from giving out around 420,000 pounds of food in 2022 to over a million pounds in 2023.

“I’m seeing people that have never visited a food pantry in their life,” Rochelle Gamauf, who started the organization, told NBC News. “It’s not just the cost of food increasing, it’s the increase across the board — it’s their electric bill going up, their rent going up, all their basic needs, like insurance, have increased.”