Kelly Russell was on the hunt for food to feed herself and her two children.
Her first stop on Wednesday, in the last week of October, just days before SNAP benefits were expected to be paused for 1 million Massachusetts residents because of the government shutdown, was to DISH, the food pantry at Bunker Hill Community College, where she studies liberal arts. Through their online portal, she secured a bit of canned vegetables, some proteins.
On Thursday,she stopped by ABCD North End/West End Neighborhood Service Center, where she received two bags of staples: rice, canned tomatoes, some chicken, canned green beans.
The food would help her family of three get through the next week or so.
After that, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. It is a huge shortfall to lose almost your entire monthly food budget, from one day to the next.”
Russell, a single mother of two who relies on $497 a month in SNAP to feed her family of three, is used to scrambling to make ends meet.
At the beginning of the month, she uses her SNAP benefits to buy the basics: bread, milk, cheese, rice. She opts for chicken drumsticks instead of more expensive breasts or red meat.
“We’ll have some fruits, some vegetables, for the first week to 10 days, and then the rest of the month, it’s canned vegetables. There’s not a lot of salads at dinner.”
During the pandemic, she put together a mutual aid group of moms from throughout the city. She’s part of community forums about how to make tight budgets go further. She considers herself a food advocate, working with other food insecure families.
But the current rise in food demand has pushed food pantries to their limit.
“It is really, really scary. I genuinely do not know how to feed my family next month, my children,” she said.
Russell has gone to ABCD, in the North End, when things have been tight before. But this time felt different.
After a client advocate, Kevan Mullen, greeted her and had her fill out some forms – about her age, her race, if she had kids, her educational background, her income, whether she rents or owns, her utility bill – he explained she would only be able to come back again exactly a month later, on Nov. 30.
“I’m noticing changes like that everywhere,” Russell commented, when Mullen left the room. “It used to be, you could come when you need it. Now, they tell you when you can come.”
Soup kitchens and food pantries across the city report a drastic rise in demand. Cambridge Community Center normally has about 90 people attend their food pantry. Recently, they’ve seen upwards of 120. Women’s Lunch Place in Boston has seen a nearly 20 percent increase in foot traffic recently.
Russell has noticed that DISH, the food pantry at Bunker Hill Community College, seems overwhelmed. Students used to be able to pick up food twice a month. Now, it’s only once. She’s learned to place an order weeks or months in advance.
The cuts have come up in her classes at college. ”People are very scared. They don’t know what next week is going to hold. Saturday, people will wake up to no food. And there’s no indication anyone’s going to end this.”
The cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time for Russell. In September, her daughter called from a friend’s house, where she was having a sleepover.
“Mom, am I allergic to anything?” she asked.
“No,” Russell replied. “What are you talking about?”
Her daughter explained she had just eaten dinner – steak, washed down by soy milk – and now her throat was itchy. “I feel like it’s starting to get tight.”
At the hospital, the doctors suspected that she had developed a sudden allergy to soy. A few weeks later, they learned she also had allergic reactions to some fruits, vegetables, nuts.
Russell panicked, thinking about her food budget. “I immediately knew this was going to change my life.”
“People don’t understand how expensive it is to be poor, in this kind of economy. There’s no savings when you live on a fixed income. Every day there’s an emergency.”
As her daughter adjusted to her new reality, Russell has been trying to shield her from news of the Nov. 1 benefit cuts. But last weekend, her daughter asked, “So are we gonna get EBT next month?”
“Where’d you see that,” asked Russell.
“Online. My friends are talking about it.”
Her eldest daughter, 22, offered to pick up more shifts in her job in retail, in between pursuing a college degree in psychology, sociology and criminal justice.
“I can help out more,” she insisted. “We’ll be OK.”
Russell isn’t so sure. When she went to another pantry earlier this month, she realized she could only use about one-tenth of what was offered: Looking through the labels, she learned almost everything had soy. Just the other night, when her daughter had accidentally eaten something with soy, Russell had to use the epi pen on her, for the first time. She watched as her daughter’s breathing rapidly grew quicker.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to wait,” Russell said. “I’m quickly learning that we can’t take any chances.”
As she made her way back down the ABCD hallway and into a grey, blustery afternoon, Russell peered into the two bags Mullen had given her and found canned corn, rice, canned green beans and diced tomatoes–safe for her daughter. It would hold them over for a few days.
Mullen explained she could also stop by on Mondays, when the center gets donations from Stop and Shop.
“That’s good,” Russell said, with some hesitation.
The donation varied week by week: Maybe the food would work for her daughter, maybe it wouldn’t.
Russell shivered in the wind, pulling her black hoodie tightly around her. “We’re just going to have to stretch. We’re just going to have to rely on friends, on the strength of my community, my village. Because there’s just no way I can make it. There’s just no way.”