Food insecurity is on the rise in KC. Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ may make it worse
In the two months he’s been homeless, Simon Terry has tried to stay optimistic. The immediacy of hunger pangs makes focusing on the future a challenge.
“There was a gentleman who tried to show me the proper way to do dumpster diving and I just, I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” said Terry, 46, who is living on the streets of Kansas City.
He’s one of roughly 112,000 Jackson County residents experiencing food insecurity — a 10-year high, according to the community groups dedicated to fighting hunger there.
At least two or three times a week, Terry can count on a warm meal at the Nourish KC Community Kitchen, which serves 500 people daily.
But advocates warn that the promise of deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in President Donald Trump’s budget bill could leave more people hungry and undermine the work being done to combat food insecurity across the Kansas City metro.
“Lately, showing up here has felt like holding the line while everything else is collapsing,” said Shanita McAfee-Bryant, a chef and executive director of the Prospect KC, which operates the community kitchen.
The Trump administration’s decision to freeze $500 million in funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, this spring reduced Prospect KC’s monthly food supply by two-thirds, McAfee-Bryant said.
And analyses of the GOP megabill have found it would slash between $211 billion and $300 billion for SNAP over 10 years.
To qualify for SNAP benefits, households typically must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. Less than 40% of the 120,000 people experiencing food insecurity in Jackson County qualify for SNAP assistance, McAfee-Bryant said.
“The rest, they’re the working poor,” she said. “People who are doing gig jobs, caring for their loved ones, navigating unstable housing, and the ones who fall just outside of the safety net but they still cannot make ends meet.”
The impact of deep cuts to SNAP would be devastating, she said. Organizations like her own and others that combat hunger in the community, like Harvesters food bank would be unable to fill in the gaps.
“Not with local donations, not with volunteers and not with goodwill alone,” McAfee-Bryant said.
Food insecurity in KC
Experts say SNAP benefits provide nine meals for every one that a food bank or community kitchen can. The proposed cuts to SNAP would result in a reduction of between 7 billion and 9.5 billion meals a year, according to the Feeding America food bank network.
“Being poor is a full-time job. And being poor, it’s not like you can take a weekend off. You’re going to be poor and hungry those days,” said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat, at a news conference Friday.
The budget bill passed the House last month, but Cleaver said he’s optimistic that Republican infighting will derail it from becoming law.
“We have a chance of making repairs in the Senate,” Cleaver said. “If there are any changes in the legislation, it will have to come back to the House. And I doubt seriously if it can get out of the House, because the Senate is going to make some changes that the Freedom Caucus will not accept.”
Last month, after being picked by Trump to oversee Department of Agriculture nutritional benefits programs, including SNAP, Kansas state Rep. Patrick Penn, a Wichita Republican, promised to crack down on benefits fraud. He said he’s ready to “make a couple people cry.”
Asked to respond Friday, Cleaver shook his head mournfully.
“People are crying. He’s got that right,” Cleaver said. “People are crying because they’re hungry and parents are crying because they are not going to be able to sufficiently feed their children.”
Terry, the homeless Kansas City resident, said there are many misconceptions about the kind of people who wake up in the morning not knowing where their next meal will come from.
“If someone is hungry or broke, it might not be their fault,” Terry said. “It might just be mitigating circumstances that prevailed against that person, and just because a person is hungry doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve made improper decisions in their life. Feed someone if you can.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2025 at 2:30 PM.
