New York City food pantries experienced twice as many visits from families with children last year as they did in 2019, a new report by the nonprofit City Harvest shows.

The food rescue group’s annual report on child hunger underscores a stubborn food crisis that hasn’t slowed since the pandemic's worst days and that advocates worry could worsen amid looming cuts to federal food benefits.

“We are seeing a persistently high need for food assistance, especially among families with children in New York City,” said City Harvest CEO Jilly Stephens. “The line that we see at our own distribution in Sunset Park has to be seen to be believed.”

The report shows visits by families with kids to food pantries in fiscal year 2025 was up 97% from six years earlier. Pantries had an average 1 million visits by families with children every month.

City Harvest said one in four children don’t reliably have enough food. About 42% of families with children reported needing more money to meet their household food needs — a 24% increase from before the pandemic.

“Pre-pandemic food pantries were really serving families that were unemployed and/or receiving benefits, where post-pandemic we're finding that a good portion of the people [who] are coming to our food pantry are working or are in school,” said Edwin Pacheco, executive director of Redemption Red Hook Food Pantry.

The “cost of living in New York City is outrageous,” he said.

Food policy advocates are bracing for even longer lines next month, when New Yorkers who don’t meet new federal work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, could begin to lose their benefits.

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump approved a tax-and-spending measure last summer that added new work rules for SNAP recipients, who have three months to meet them before getting kicked off their benefits.

The changes mean families with children who are 14 or older will have to work 20 hours a week, volunteer or be in school to hold onto their monthly benefits. About 1.8 million New Yorkers, including 500,000 children, receive SNAP.

Stephens said the federal government shutdown in November and the unprecedented two-week freeze on SNAP benefits was a window into how crucial the program is for families and how much pressure the city’s food system could face without it.

New Yorkers skipped meals, stopped paying their bills and flooded soup kitchens and pantries. Grocery stores reported dips in sales and some emergency food providers ran out of food or had to turn people away.

“The frequency with which we'll see people coming, the distance people will travel to go to a pantry or food distribution or mobile market that maybe is outside of their immediate vicinity, those are the sorts of things you start to see when you see pressure applied to this network of food programs,” Stephens said. “Families will go farther afield.”

Stephens said City Harvest is planning for a potential surge in demand in the coming months across the 400 pantry partners it supplies.