With the rise in grocery prices these days, the topic of accessing healthy, affordable food seems to be everywhere. It is an important conversation to have because food is necessary for human existence, not a luxury item. This fact remains true for both housed and unhoused people: food costs are up, meaning many are having to make tough choices or go without.
This is the first piece in a month-long series exploring food insecurity through the lens of our unhoused neighbors in our community. Food insecurity is commonly discussed these days. Homelessness is talked about. But the specific, daily experience of trying to feed yourself when you have no address, no kitchen, and nowhere to store what you can’t eat right now is where the gap in our public understanding tends to live.
The hidden requirement for almost every food resource
Journey through the common food assistance programs in any community, including ours, and you’ll see something many overlook: almost all programs automatically assume the recipient has a home, and this is only if they manage to qualify for assistance.
SNAP benefits load onto a card, but the program is built around the idea that you’ll buy groceries and take them somewhere to prepare. Food pantries hand out boxes of rice, pasta, dried beans, canned vegetables, and frozen meat, staples that require a stove, a pot, a can opener, refrigeration, and time. WIC vouchers, school meal backpack programs, and even many holiday food drives are designed for households that can store, cook, and serve.
For someone sleeping in a car, a tent, or a friend’s garage, or moving between couches, that bag of groceries isn’t a meal. It’s a logistics problem. Where do they keep the milk? How do they cook the chicken? What do they do with the rice and dried beans when you don’t have a pot, a burner, or running water? How do they carry three days’ worth of food when you’re already carrying everything you own?
The result is a strictly limited diet that someone without a kitchen can prepare.
What “accessible food” looks like
When we strip away storage and preparation, the food landscape narrows fast for our unhoused neighbors. What’s left must either be eaten immediately, be shelf-stable, or won’t spoil in a backpack on a hot day.
In practice, that often means gas-station food or dollar-store-type snacks, or fast food from the value menu when someone has a few dollars. Securing food often looks like free coffee and a pastry at a church drop-in or a hot meal at a soup kitchen if the timing and location work out. It can also be whatever a passerby hands over, or what a pantry offers in the form of “grab-and-go” bags. These bags typically consist of granola bars, peanut butter crackers, chips, fruit cups, and bottled water.
The majority of these foods satisfy immediate hunger, but they don’t address the longer-term nutritional problems created by this type of diet. These foods are, almost without exception, high in sodium and sugar, low in fiber and fresh produce, and engineered for shelf life rather than for health.
The harsh reality is that those most reliant on this food are often the least able to afford the health impacts eating this way brings. Conditions like diabetes, hypertension, dental problems, and many others that demand careful dietary management don’t stop when someone loses their housing. A diabetic without access to a refrigerator can’t store insulin properly or make a meal plan to keep sugar levels correct. Similarly, someone with high blood pressure can’t easily avoid sodium, as most available calories come from processed and packaged foods. Think about the last time you were near a grocery store checkout, in a gas station, or at a dollar store. What food choices were there near the till? Chances are, most were snack-type foods that offer little nutritional value.
The dignity that no one talks about
There’s a piece of this that doesn’t show up in statistics, and it matters: eating without a home is almost always public.
There’s no closing the kitchen door. No sitting down at a table with the people you love. No quiet moment to enjoy what you’re eating. Meals happen on benches, in parking lots, in line, or in a shelter like Nest.
For families, the weight is heavier. Parents experiencing homelessness work extraordinarily hard to shield their children from the reality of where their next meal will come from. They give up their own portions, ration, and schedule their day around free meal sites, the way other parents schedule their day around school pickup. The mental load of feeding a family without a kitchen is enormous, and it’s invisible to almost everyone who isn’t carrying it.
Why this series, and why now
Over the next month, we’re going to walk through this topic piece by piece. We’ll look at the specific barriers that prevent people experiencing homelessness from accessing the food assistance that technically exists for them. We’ll talk about the health consequences of long-term reliance on shelf-stable food, and what our community is doing, and could be doing, to close the gap. We’ll share what we see every day at Nest, and what our guests have taught us about this topic. Lastly, we’ll share the resources available in our community for those in need.
We’re beginning with this piece because it sets the landscape of this conversation. When someone has no address, food insecurity isn’t just about a lack of food. It’s about lacking everything needed to eat properly: a place to store it, the means to prepare it, a calm moment to eat, and the stability to plan beyond just the next hour.
Follow along as we highlight the connections, roadblocks, and the impact that food insecurity has on our unhoused community.
