One of poverty’s most dehumanizing symptoms is food insecurity. When a person is hungry, or simply unsure about where their next meal will come from, they are in survival mode.
Since food insecurity is inextricably linked to other forms of social inequity caused by class, race, and legal status, it’s a problem that cannot be solved without addressing all the surrounding factors as well.
When grocery stores are nowhere to be found, or are too expensive to serve the population in their neighborhood, the problem worsens.
Gentrification and increased cost of living are pushing low-income people further away from grocery stores, which also compounds the problem.
Programs like SNAP can alleviate the burden, but they exclude many people, including new immigrants and homeless people. Alternate solutions, like soup kitchens and affordable mobile markets, are trying to pick up the slack.
