The lines at food pantries and soup kitchens across the city have been steadily growing due to inflation and the rising cost of living. 

But as the number of hungry New Yorkers increases, federal budget cuts to social service programs loom over the very places that are trying to combat food insecurity. Across New York City, the people who run soup kitchens and pantries fear that the worst is yet to come, as food becomes increasingly more expensive and new laws threaten to diminish food assistance even further. 

Some changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are already in effect since the Big Beautiful Bill passed in July, Trump’s signature legislation that created new work requirements for SNAP, while cutting funding to the program. The law will make some people in previously covered groups, including homeless individuals, veterans, and young adults who’ve aged out of foster care, ineligible for SNAP. The bill also raises the age for the work requirement from 59 to 65. Out of the 3.5 million New Yorkers statewide who rely on SNAP, 281,000 will lose benefits immediately after the new federal cuts are implemented, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a New York-based think tank. 

“We’re bracing. We’re certainly bracing,” said Cassandra Agredo, executive director of Xavier Mission, a soup kitchen and food pantry in Chelsea. The organization serves 1,000 hot meals every Sunday, and has seen the number of food pantry guests more than double in the past few years. But Agredo is anticipating even more people in need if the cuts continue. “We will probably have a spike both in the numbers at our soup kitchen and also at our food pantry,” she said. 

The people who get food from pantries around the city say they’re grateful for the extra help. 

“It’s a blessing when you get the food,” said one pantry guest from Washington Heights, who works in sales and didn’t want to use her name because of her job. “By the time you pay the taxes, you pay the union dues, you buy the monthly Metrocard, you pay for health insurance … and you put something away for your 401K, there’s nothing.”

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Food Policy estimates that more than 1.5 million New Yorkers were food insecure in 2023. As of April, that number is up to 2 million according to The New York Health Foundation, a healthcare philanthropy group. Recent numbers from the Mayor’s Office show that over 1.8 million New York City residents received SNAP benefits in 2024. 

And the bill’s impact on smaller food pantries is already taking effect. 

Elizabeth Starling, director of development at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, on Ninth Avenue near West 28th Street, took notice when major funding it receives from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program was shut off in January when Trump took office. 

“This has created roughly a $400,000 hole in our budget,” Starling said, explaining that this year’s expenses are projected to run around $5.4 million. Holy Apostles has 1,500 households signed up for its pantry, providing food for 7,100 people biweekly. But the food pantry is at capacity, she said, and cannot take any new guests. 

Food Bank for NYC, one of the largest hunger-relief organizations in the city, provides food for about 800 pantries across the five boroughs, distributing 103 million pounds of food in fiscal year 2024. Leslie Gordon, its president and CEO, said food insecurity in the city remains “stubbornly high.” Mounting expenses coupled with high inflation rates create a “convergence of things that are essentially pulling the rug out of the overall resources in a household budget.”

The food bank also hosts nutrition education programs in the city’s school system, reaching about 13,000 kids per year. Cuts will immediately slash all $2 million of government funding for these school initiatives, said Gordon. 

With the impending cuts to SNAP, food banks and pantries will see more people coming from different parts of the city, said Nicholas Freudenberg, co-founder of the NYC Food Policy Center at Hunter College. Pantries in Midtown, he explained, are particularly saturated because “people who walk in their door aren’t only residents of Midtown,” he said, adding that the pantries “often serve a citywide population.”

At Holy Apostles, the woman from Washington Heights grew somber thinking of the hardships to come. As volunteers packed her bag of groceries for the week—some plump red tomatoes and a dozen eggs— she looked out, misty-eyed, behind her thick black glasses. She believes the government must help people “living below the poverty line,” she said. “They got to help the people.”