The Unreachable Hungry: Mapping the Distance Between Hunger and Help

Photo Courtesy of United Way Central Florida

In Facebook groups across the country, the messages appear with numbing regularity. 

A mother in Volusia County, Florida, writes that her fridge is empty and her shift doesn’t end until 7 p.m.—too late for the food pantry’s limited hours. A retiree in rural Oklahoma asks if anyone can drop off groceries; his car broke down and the nearest pantry is 30 miles away. 

In my own community of Tulsa, OK, I see these pleas multiply by the day: quiet, desperate signals sent into the digital void: “Does anyone have extra food? 

And for many of the people posting, the common thread isn’t unemployment, it’s immobility.

The pantry closes before their shift ends. The bus doesn’t run that far. The car won’t start.

This is the overlooked failure of our food system, the mobility gap, and it’s turning the working poor, the elderly and the disabled into what advocates now call the unreachable hungry.

This is what hunger looks like in America in 2025—not just empty cupboards, but the logistics around access itself. It’s people working full-time who still can’t afford to eat, parents who can’t get off work in time to stand in a pantry line, and seniors or disabled residents who simply can’t get there at all.

And now, just as millions are already on the brink, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—the federal safety net known as SNAP—is collapsing under the weight of Washington’s dysfunction.

When the Safety Net Collapses

When the government shut down on October 1, 2025, lawmakers failed to renew funding for SNAP, leaving more than 40 million Americans without their November benefits. That includes roughly 16 million children and 5 million seniors all suddenly facing a month without their primary source of food assistance.

For the nation’s food banks, already operating at crisis levels, it’s a nightmare scenario.

In the midwest, Alex Lindstrom, Director of Development at Respond Now, an emergency assistance organization providing relief in Chicago's south suburbs, says the strain is already visible.

“Since Biden refused to continue COVID-era SNAP budget expansions, we’ve seen the number of visits to our Chicago Heights pantry nearly double and stay there,” Lindstrom told HYVEMIND. “Now, Trump’s federal-level cuts to various health and hunger initiatives have trickled down to local food ecosystems like ours. 

“Relationships between local producers and pantries have lost the funding that sustained them. With SNAP cut once again—and now under threat of a complete shutdown—we expect a dramatic increase in need, desperate families seeking nutrition that should be theirs by right of living in the wealthiest nation on Earth.”

America’s Hunger Crisis Has a Transportation Problem

Even when charitable food is plentiful, millions of working Americans are often shut out by time and distance. Many food pantries are open only during standard business hours — 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on a weekday, or perhaps one Saturday morning a month. Those are impossible hours for anyone clocking shifts or managing childcare.

Transportation adds another layer of inequity. In urban centers, some families travel across multiple bus lines to reach a distribution site. In rural areas, a pantry might be 20 or 30 miles away, reachable only by car. For those without one, hunger becomes a problem of geography as much as poverty.

According to a recent Urban Institute report, two-thirds of food pantry clients cite lack of reliable transportation as a key barrier to access. For seniors and people with disabilities, that barrier can be absolute.

It’s this invisible wall—the distance between hunger and help—that inspired Jasmine Louis, founder of Mutual Rise, in Southern California, to rethink how food relief moves.

She’s built what she calls a “boots-on-the-ground infrastructure,” one designed to complement and strengthen the work of traditional nonprofits by reaching those who can’t get to them.

“Mutual Rise is an LLC that supports nonprofits and grassroots organizations,” she told HYVEMIND. “ We help them store and distribute donations they’re already tapped into. 

Her team delivers directly to residents who are homebound or working during pantry hours. Many of their routes serve seniors, single parents and disabled residents living miles from the nearest food assistance site.

“Think of us as foot soldiers,” she said. “We get food and essentials from point A to point B, especially to people who can’t get to food banks.”

While grassroots groups like Mutual Rise are reimagining food relief on the ground, some of the nation’s largest tech companies are stepping in to bridge the distance between hunger and help—at least temporarily.

During the pandemic, partnerships between delivery networks and food banks quietly proved what was possible when mobility met need. That innovation has endured.

DoorDash’s Project DASH, for example, has powered more than eight million grocery deliveries since its launch—roughly 135 million meals. The company’s driver network now serves as a lifeline for people who can’t make it to distribution sites: seniors, people with disabilities and workers whose schedules don’t align with traditional pantry hours.

When the government shutdown left millions without November SNAP benefits, DoorDash announced an emergency plan to deliver one million free meals, waiving delivery fees for all 300-plus nonprofit partners. It also waived grocery delivery fees for SNAP customers ordering from chains like Sprouts, Dollar General and Hy-Vee, totaling nearly 300,000 orders in a single month.

Gopuff launched its own effort, pledging $10 million in free groceries for SNAP users through $50 credits and free delivery—enough to cover an estimated 400,000 orders nationwide. Lyft, meanwhile, expanded its Essential Access program to offer free or discounted rides to grocery stores, food banks and medical appointments.

Yet, the irony is hard to miss when many of the drivers now delivering food relief are themselves food insecure. For countless gig workers, these deliveries represent both a lifeline and a privatized patch on a public wound. The system, it seems, has become a closed loop: one where those holding it together are often the ones it fails.

The Long Road to a Full Plate

The story of hunger in America is not just about food itself. It’s about capacity—financial, physical and moral—and what happens when every route to relief begins to narrow at once.

Our hunger problem is not confined to one piece of the system. The funding that once stabilized local food networks is drying up, the volunteers who hold them together are burning out, pantries are stretching dwindling budgets to meet rising demand, all while the public programs meant to reinforce them are stuck in political limbo.

The emergency food system wasn’t built to sustain millions of Americans for years on end, and it certainly wasn’t designed to move food across the distances that poverty creates.

When every link in that chain is strained, it’s not a question of whether people will go hungry, but how many, and for how long.