When Latame Phillips suddenly became a single father, he wasn’t always sure where he’d find dinner after paying for housing and daycare.
“My children almost fell into food insecurity,” said Phillips, the CEO of Hunger Busters, a Dallas nonprofit that feeds about 3,500 students every day in Dallas ISD through 11 after-school programs.
When his children were young, Phillips recalls going hungry himself. He would encourage his kids to share “bonus bites” with him after they finished dinner that night.
“I would take a spoonful of whatever to help them out because I had a rule that you couldn’t get up until you finish your food,” Phillips said. “That rule was really in place because there wasn’t enough food for me to eat.”
Phillips’ family hasn’t been alone in experiencing hunger. Texas has more food-insecure residents than any other state, according to the latest Feeding America study.
Local organizations that serve North Texas families have reported significant demand in services over the past few years as COVID-era relief expired and food costs rose.
Nonprofits like Hunger Busters often fill in the gaps with feeding programs, food pantries and community gardens, helping families access more nutritious options regularly.
It’s a demoralizing, impossible task when parents trying to pay bills have to make decisions like keeping the lights on or eating dinner that night, Phillips recalled.
“It’s a decision that no parent should have to make,” he said.
Focusing on curing the root causes of food insecurity should be the aim of healthy communities, said Jenique Jones, Executive Director of WhyHunger, a national nonprofit focused on eradicating hunger and poverty.
WhyHunger, which isn’t associated with North Texas programs, helps advocate for food security with grassroots organizations across the country.
Ending hunger begins with examining the systems that created it, Jones said, including racial and economic injustices, global public policy and land rights.
WhyHunger works with farmers throughout 24 countries, including the U.S., to build sustainable gardens that feed families and communities.
“Food sovereignty is really about having some form of ownership or control over your food system and not being reliant on the government or other [entities],” Jones said.
The nonprofit also advocates for corporate reform that limits inflation’s impact on working families and the cost of food, Jones said.
Solving hunger starts with tackling rising housing costs that often leave families with little income to spend on groceries, said Teresa Jackson with Sharing Life in Mesquite.
“The housing issue is the biggest issue in my opinion, because it’s what creates hunger,” Jackson said. “The housing issue is huge because [both parents] literally can work 40 hours a week… and still not afford the cheapest apartment.”
Each day, Sharing Life sees about 300 households that shop in their market for fresh food and canned goods like a normal grocery store, which restores choice and dignity to families, Jackson said.
The nonprofit recently opened a pantry in a former Office Depot. It is one of the largest food pantries in the region, on track to distribute over 17 million pounds this year, Jackson said.
Jackson said the demand for affordable, nutritious food has skyrocketed in the past few years, pushing the nonprofit to explore innovative solutions like being a “redistribution hub” for the North Texas Food Bank.
To save on costs and increase efficiency, the North Texas Food Bank – with headquarters in Plano – partners with both Sharing Life and Crossroads Community Services – to deliver food to the region’s 250 smaller nonprofits.
The redistribution hubs act as a pit-stop where deliveries from the North Texas Food Bank can be stored until smaller organizations can pick up supplies, which helps expand the reach into southern Dallas.
Crossroads was the first organization for the North Texas Food Bank in 2011 to distribute a million pounds of food in large part because of the more efficient redistribution model, said Benaye Wadkins Chambers, Crossroad’s president and CEO.
The nonprofit also partners with UT Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Health in food equity research around innovation.
“We’re really always looking at the impact of certain types of distribution models of food that actually create pathways to sustainability for the communities that we serve,” Wadkins Chambers said.
Instead of feeding people only in moments of crisis, Wadkins Chambers said her nonprofit has shifted to intervening to help families each month.
By sustaining food access over the year, Wadkins Chambers said families’ stress over food decreases, giving a household more financial stability.
But as school ends and summer begins, more families are going to struggle to feed their kids nutritious meals each day, Phillips said.
In most cases, Phillips has found a child goes hungry most often when their parents are working in the evening to make enough money to cover household bills.
Phillips said most children in the programs come from homes with two parents, both of whom are fully employed. But the parents still don’t make enough income to cover expenses – or they make too much to qualify for public assistance, he said.
“There’s just not enough money to take care of the month,” Phillips said. “So organizations like Hunger Busters come in and we feed dinner to the children so that there’s a little bit of peace of mind to the parents while they work in their second job.”
Phillips said ensuring children have reliable access to nutritious food should be a corporate responsibility as companies plan to grow their workforce.
“Feeding the child today is really an investment in your company for tomorrow,” Phillips said.
Studies show that students who are well-fed have higher test scores and fewer attendance and behavioral issues in school, Phillips said.
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