More than one in five Arlington residents is experiencing food insecurity, according to a new report.
The Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB) released its 2024 Hunger Report yesterday (Thursday), revealing that 23% of households in Arlington County struggle to afford enough nutritious food.
Though food insecurity has increased across all income levels, some of the sharpest growth has been among middle-income households earning between $100,000 and $150,000 annually. Families are finding that the rising cost of essentials like housing and food is outpacing wage growth, forcing them to make difficult decisions about when to cut back on meals or other basic needs.
“A family today can afford almost 10% less on their incomes than they could four years ago,” CAFB CEO Radha Muthiah told ARLnow. “And so that is what we’re seeing as the drivers that really have caused people who, again, may not have been food insecure a couple of years ago, now be unable to make ends meet and need assistance in putting nutritious food on their tables.”
The Hunger Report notes that a “basic household budget” for a family of four in the D.C. area requires around $114,000 to $135,000 in annual income.
Despite the increased proportion of Arlington residents facing food insecurity — defined based on an 18-item USDA screener — the county is the best off of all D.C.-area municipalities included in the study. The food insecurity rate for the region as a whole is 37%.
Within the county, however, South Arlington continues to have a disproportionately high concentration of residents unable to afford basic necessities.
Food insecurity on the rise in Arlington
Since 2023, the share of of Arlington residents affected by food insecurity has grown from from 17% to 23%, equivalent to roughly 45,000 residents — including around 1,300 children and 5,000 seniors, a CAFB spokesperson said.
The report points to inflation as a key force behind this trend.
Food prices in the D.C. metro area have surged 22.6% since 2020, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) showing an average annual increase of 5.7% per year between May 2020 and May 2024. In total, 64% of D.C.-area residents said rising food costs have significantly impacted their finances — up from 52% last year.
“Even though the increases in inflation were smaller this year than in prior years, they come on the backs of a 15% increase overall in basic necessities,” Muthiah said. “The average wage growth in our area was [7.5%] over the last four-year period, where the average increase in consumer prices was 18-plus percent. So, you see that difference… is the reduction in purchasing power for a family.”
Rising housing costs contribute to food insecurity
Housing costs are also contributing to food insecurity, with 43% of respondents across the D.C. area identifying housing as their biggest financial burden.
Of those experiencing food insecurity, 69% said rising housing prices had severely impacted their budgets over the past year. In fiscal year 2024, CAFB delivered 749,948 meals in Arlington County, up 9% from 2023.
Arlington Food Security Coordinator Stephanie Hopkins attributed part of the increase in food insecurity to the end of pandemic-era benefits, such as extra Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments and rental assistance.
“Older adults were hit particularly hard by the elimination of the emergency SNAP benefits and most who rely on Social Security for their income reverted back to their standard SNAP benefit of just $23/month,” Hopkins said.
Increased housing costs also have a substantial impact on middle-income households, which earn too much to qualify for federal aid. Muthiah noted that “185% of the poverty line is where most of these programs sort of have their cutoff, but we know that food insecurity exists up to 300%, in some cases 400%, of the poverty line.”
Racial disparities persist
The new report also highlights significant racial disparities across the D.C. area.
In Arlington, Black and Latino households are two to three times more likely to experience food insecurity compared to white households.
In June 2022, Arlington County’s food security data dashboard showed that Black residents, comprising about 9% of the population, accounted for nearly 22% of SNAP participants and 20% of AFAC participants. Hispanic residents comprised about 14% of the population and constituted 53% of AFAC’s clientele.
By contrast, while white residents represented 59% of Arlington’s overall population, they accounted for only 12% of AFAC participants and 46% of SNAP recipients.
“In foundational economic categories such as wealth building, education and income, there exist deep disparities in outcomes by race, due to decades of systematically racist practices,” the report states.
Differences in reporting
The CAFB report’s inclusion of people from a wide range of income levels contributes to higher food-insecurity numbers than those reported elsewhere.
A recent report by the nonprofit Feeding America, for instance, lists only about 10% of Arlington residents as experiencing food insecurity as of 2022.
“[CAFB’s] rates have always been higher than the Map the Meal Gap data,” Hopkins told ARLnow. “The general belief is that their data does a better job at including people that are moderately food insecure.”
Muthiah noted that the CAFB survey uses the same survey questions as Feeding America to measure food insecurity. However, CAFB’s survey includes families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty line, while Feeding America’s survey sets the cutoff at 185% of the federal poverty line.
“CAFB’s survey administers the full questionnaire to everyone, knowing that it’s possible to earn up to 300% of the federal poverty line and still struggle to make ends meet,” Muthiah said.
Local efforts to combat food insecurity
Food insecurity is not a new problem in Arlington.
In 2013, AFAC reported that about 43% of households with children struggled to afford nutritious food. In response, Matt de Ferranti pledged during his campaign for County Board to end child hunger in Arlington by 2022.
In 2021, Arlington formed a Food Security Task Force with dozens of public and private community stakeholders to develop a strategic plan aiming to create an integrated food security system in the county. A year later, the county established the Food Security Coalition to oversee the plan’s implementation.
The coalition has spent the past year gathering data on the dietary preferences of people facing food insecurity and creating a work group focused on outreach programs.
Additionally, the County Board plans to approve $150,000 for 11 local nonprofits addressing this issue, with a second round of funding anticipated for fiscal year 2025.
