Inflation, ICE sweeps, and brief SNAP benefit loss amplify food insecurity this Thanksgiving.
By Gretchen Cochran
Original Air Date: November 26, 2025
Host: Hunger has become a challenge for more families in the area this Thanksgiving. WSLR News reporter Gretchen Cochran talked to volunteers distributing food to find out what’s going on.
Gretchen Cochran: Thanksgiving is a time when many of us focus on food. Where will it come from? How will we prepare it? With whom will we share it? But this year in our communities, there is a growing number of people who have food only through the largesse of others—through food pantries or groups dedicating themselves to lending a hand. All Faiths Food Bank reports it is seeing 27 percent more people this year than last. Manatee Food Bank reports similar numbers.
Volunteers package meals at All Faiths Foodbank in Sarasota. All photos courtesy All Faiths
We tried to get a handle on the causes for the increase. An All Faiths Food Bank analyst chalked it up to inflation, the continued increase in the cost of groceries/rent/living expenses and hurricane recovery. The brief SNAP benefit loss, though brief, still caused panic and made an impact. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It’s what we used to call “food stamps.”
In fact, a recent Consumer Affairs report found that Floridians already spend 10.6 percent of their income on groceries—above the national average of 9.5 percent—while also earning less than the typical U.S. household. Together, those pressures mean even small price jumps have an outsized impact on family budgets. And all that is pushing more households to lean on local food banks for support.
SNAP helped with that. The recent stall during the month-long government shutdown caused some alarm. However, it was an indication of the Trump administration’s intent to shift food support from the federal government to the states. According to the Economic Policy Innovation Center, SNAP is part of the “web of welfare bureaucracy that can trap people in dependence, discourage work, undermine families and communities.”
But the volunteers aiding those in need had a different view.
“Once upon a time, there was humanity,” said Janalee Heinemann.
She and Jan deRoos are two who are offering their services to help others who might otherwise be hungry Thanksgiving day.
Food delivery by All Faiths Foodbank.
Janalee and her husband, Al, live in a high rise on Siesta Key—the posher part of our community, where food availability may not be an issue. The retirees are spending most days arranging for and delivering food to undocumented immigrants. Even though free food is available at hundreds of food pantries throughout Manatee, Sarasota and DeSoto Counties, undocumented people dare not show up there for fear of being caught at a traffic stop on the way or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, will haul them away.
Janalee doesn’t look like the social worker she has become. She has shoulder-length blond hair, wears a little eye makeup and dresses fashionably. But she’s been through the trenches, working with terminally ill children and writing a book to tell their stories.
Janalee Heinemann: These were hardworking families. They were landscapers and roofers and working in the fields and housekeepers—women that clean houses or take care of people—but now we’re losing a lot of them because people that had hired them for years are now afraid to have them work for them because they could get in trouble. That’s the dilemma. And, like I said, in a lot of the cases, the husband’s already been taken. We’ve had them taken. They go in for their usual court time hearing and, as they’re trying to process becoming legal, they’re getting nabbed right at the courthouse.
GC: Janalee and Al are working through their church, Church of the Trinity, MCC. She is the primary coordinator, lining up food, volunteers and those in need. She keeps no records online, taking care that clients cannot be tracked. So far, in four months, they have helped 143 families.
JH: I’ve worked with really tragic things my whole career, so I can handle knowing my limitations. I do what I can do, but you can’t make it all okay. You can just do your piece of making part of it okay.
GC: Janalee told of one delivery. A child yelled:
In the food line.
“Mama! We’ve got food!” A four-year-old shouldn’t have to get so excited to have food, she said.
There are two big non-profit food banks on the Suncoast. Manatee County Food Bank each year serves hundreds of thousands of meals through Food4Families, through Meals on Wheels and through Produce on Wheels. All Faith’s Food Bank serves Sarasota and DeSoto Counties, where Arcadia is located.
One of the All Faiths volunteers is Jan deRoos. He’s a retired professor of commercial real estate but majored in college in hospitality, requiring him to work in hotels and kitchens.
Food line in Sarasota.
Jan volunteers weekly for All Faiths at its Booker Elementary School site. 65 cars showed up recently.
Jan described the different volunteer tasks. He’s worked in distribution and sorting. Food comes in from various food vendors like Publix and Whole Foods. The sorting requires checking expiration dates.
Jan deRoos: Certain dairy, like yogurt, keeps a long time. Milk doesn’t. Butter keeps a long time. Sour cream can actually keep a long time. We give away a lot of eggs. People love the eggs—“Can you put an extra dozen in there?”
GC: They are unable to give out anything with fruit in it because it doesn’t keep well, or anything with icing.
Do some people take advantage of the system?
JD: You have to qualify because it’s not exclusively private funding. There is some funding that they get.
GC: There’s common lore that some folks in fancy, expensive cars are showing up for free food. Jan said many of those expensive-looking cars are actually old ones in poor condition.
JD: When we distributed to veterans, there was one Tesla. I was the last person, so I was directing them to where they got the turkey in a box with Thanksgiving stuff in it and then directing them out. There’s a lot of vets driving cars that don’t have very good brakes.
Their safety net at the federal and state level is getting smaller. There was the interruption from the government shutdown. At Booker, we ran out twice.
GC: There was a special distribution for veterans. Then one for Thanksgiving dinner with 10- to 16-pound frozen Butterball turkeys, or 16 to 24 pounds.
The health department does its checks, but there’s another accreditation group for food banks that checked last week as well.
“Will we one day no longer have this food support system?” we asked.
JD: There’s always bad things happening to people. People make stupid decisions. People are left in untenable situations. A breadwinner leaves a family behind, and she has to pick up the pieces, and she doesn’t have a job. Or people just run out of money, or they got sick and don’t have any money left. There’s always, I think, going to be a need.
GC: For WSLR News, this is Gretchen Cochran.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.