WE PUT IT IN THE BAG… What Hunger Has to Do With Housing
Is it a little funny to be spending an afternoon at a grocery store when you work for an organization whose mission is to prevent and end homelessness? On Friday, September 18, that is exactly where Family Promise of Hunterdon County found itself. Dawn Hartfelder and Pam Briant rolled up their sleeves at ShopRite of Clinton for Help Bag Hunger, part of September’s Hunger Action Month and ShopRite’s Partners In Caring initiative. They came prepared to bag groceries, talk with our neighbors about hunger and housing instability, and hopefully meet a few people along the way. And yes, bag a lot of groceries too.
While they may have discovered that years of nonprofit communications and program-management experience do not necessarily make particularly good efficient packers of grocery bags… fortunately, nobody appeared to judge the technique too harshly. But the grocery bags were really just the beginning of the story, because why was Family Promise of Hunterdon County there in the first place? To answer that question, we have to talk about hunger.
First, what exactly is Hunger Action Month?
Every September, the Feeding America network holds Hunger Action Month, a national campaign created in 2007 to raise awareness about hunger and inspire people to take action to end it. In other words, September isn’t simply supposed to be a month when we think about people who are hungry. It is supposed to be a month when we ask ourselves what we can actually do.
When someone says the word “hunger,” we picture a person who has nothing to eat. Sometimes hunger can look like that… but it’s often quieter. It can look like a parent standing in a grocery store doing math in their head and putting something back at the checkout. It can look like stretching what is left in the refrigerator for another night, skipping a meal yourself so your children can eat, or relying on a food pantry because there simply isn’t enough money left at the end of the month.
The USDA uses the term food insecurity to describe households that, at some point during the year, are uncertain that they will have enough food or are unable to acquire enough food for all of their members because they lack sufficient money or other resources. In 2024, 13.7% of U.S. households (that is 18.3 million) experienced food insecurity at some point during the year. Of those households, 5.4%, or 7.2 million of them, experienced the more severe condition known as very low food security, in which people’s food intake and normal eating patterns were disrupted because they did not have enough resources for food.
These are big numbers… and we don’t want that to actually make a problem harder to understand. So let’s make it smaller. Let’s put one family in a grocery store.
Imagine you have $4,000 to live on.
This is not a statistical example of what every family earns and not meant to represent a typical household… just simply a way to understand how quickly a household budget can become very tight. So imagine a family brings home $4,000 a month after taxes and rent is $2,200. That leaves $1,800. Electricity, heat and water might take another $250, the cell phone might be $100, car insurance $150, gas $200. Perhaps there is a car payment, childcare, medicine, school expenses, laundry, household supplies and the thousand other ordinary things that appear in life whether you planned for them or not.
Before that family has even bought much food, a very large part of its monthly income is already spoken for. Now imagine that the car needs a $700 repair, or a child needs an unexpected medical expense, or someone’s hours at work are cut, or the electric bill is higher than expected. Suddenly it’s time to make choices. For many households living close to the edge, there is a limited amount of money, and a lot of necessities competing for it.
Feeding America’s local research specifically identifies housing, health care, utilities and child and dependent care among the costs that can compete with food resources and contribute to food insecurity. So when something goes wrong in one part of the household budget, the consequences can spill into another.
There is the connection… this is where Family Promise of Hunterdon County fits in.
Because keeping someone housed is also about keeping the rest of their life from falling apart.
Family Promise of Hunterdon County’s mission is straightforward: to prevent and end homelessness in Hunterdon County. Our work includes helping people who are already experiencing homelessness, helping people move toward permanent housing, providing case management and practical support, and helping eligible Hunterdon County residents remain in their existing homes when an unexpected emergency threatens their housing.
Our Homeless Prevention Program is specifically designed for people who are facing eviction because of an unexpected, unavoidable expense. When a household meets the program’s eligibility requirements and funding is available, we can assistance to help bring rent current, working directly with the landlord. The purpose is not to provide permanent rent assistance. The purpose is to prevent a household that can otherwise sustain its housing from becoming homeless in the first place. Prevention means intervening before the crisis becomes homelessness.
Imagine that same family with the $4,000 monthly income. Imagine that the car breaks, and that $700 repair has to come from somewhere. If the family uses the money that was supposed to pay the rent, the problem does not necessarily end when the car is fixed. The rent is behind and the next paycheck is already committed to groceries and utilities. Another month arrives and this family is slipping further behind. One problem can become another problem, and then another. Eventually, something that began as a car repair can become a housing crisis. That is why prevention matters.
The goal isn’t simply to give someone food. The goal is to help create enough stability that a family can keep meeting its basic needs.
There are wonderful organizations throughout Hunterdon County whose specific mission is to fight hunger and make sure people have access to food. We saw some of those organizations at ShopRite on Friday. The Open Cupboard Food Pantry was there and Norwescap, Deer Path YMCA, The Town of Clinton Police Department… many local organizations. This is exactly how a community safety net is supposed to work. No single organization has to solve every problem. Instead, we build a community in which people can find help when one part of life becomes too difficult to manage alone.
And Hunterdon County has a hunger problem, too.
Hunterdon County is often thought of as an affluent place, and some of our local food-insecurity numbers are lower than those in many other parts of New Jersey. But “lower” does not mean “zero.” Feeding America’s 2026 Map the Meal Gap estimates, based on 2024 data, show that food insecurity exists in every U.S. community. A recent analysis of those data reported that approximately 7.2% of Hunterdon County residents experienced food insecurity in 2024. Maybe that sounds small… but stop and remember what a percentage actually represents.
These are not percentages walking around Hunterdon County. They are people; children, parents, older adults, workers… ou neighbors. And food insecurity does not automatically mean someone is unemployed, homeless or living on the street. A person can have a job and still struggle to afford enough food. A family can have an apartment and still be one unexpected expense away from a housing crisis. This is why the conversation about hunger belongs in a conversation about housing.
So what did Family Promise have to do with Hunger Action Month?
We showed up. On September 18, Dawn and Pam stood at the end of the checkout line at ShopRite of Clinton and did something ordinary: we bagged people’s groceries. Bonnie from ShopRite was incredibly helpful throughout the afternoon, and our cashiers, Betty and Betty (yes, there really were two Bettys working side by side) were wonderful. They knew so many of their customers by name, and watching those little exchanges between neighbors was one of the most memorable parts of the afternoon. We talked with shoppers, answered questions about our work, talked about homelessness and housing instability. We met other organizations doing important work in Hunterdon County… and had a great time.
Sometimes community work looks very serious from the outside, but on the inside it can look like some nonprofit employees trying to figure out whether six cans of soup should go on the bottom of a grocery bag or whether they are going to cause the whole thing to collapse. We put it in the bag anyway!
Because the real thing we were carrying that afternoon wasn’t groceries. It was a conversation.
ShopRite’s commitment to hunger relief has been part of its community work for decades. The ShopRite Partners In Caring program was created by Wakefern and ShopRite in 1999 to support food banks and hunger-relief organizations. ShopRite reports that the program has donated tens of millions of dollars to food banks supporting more than 2,200 charities.
The Colalillo family, which owns and operates ShopRite of Clinton along with others, has been operating these family-owned stores in New Jersey since 1954. The family identifies fighting hunger and supporting local food pantries among its community priorities, and says its annual 5K Run for Hunger in Flemington has raised nearly $700,000 over the years for Norwescap’s Food Bank.
So when Family Promise showed up at ShopRite of Clinton for Help Bag Hunger, we were not pretending that housing and hunger are the same problem. We were recognizing that they are connected problems.
Do we have to meet families after everything has fallen apart?
Family Promise of Hunterdon County’s work is built around the idea that homelessness is not simply a place where someone ends up. It is a crisis that can have many causes, including poverty, unaffordable housing, eviction, loss of income, low wages, disasters and other emergencies. Our work therefore includes both helping people who are already experiencing homelessness and intervening when possible before the loss of housing occurs. That is why supporting us is part of supporting a healthier community.
And sometimes the best way to solve a big problem is to recognize how all the little problems fit together.
That is what we saw at ShopRite on September 18. We saw a grocery store full of food, with shoppers filling their carts. We saw cashiers who knew their customers by name and Bonnie, Jeannie and the ShopRite team making the afternoon easy and welcoming. We saw the Clinton Police Department, Open Cupboard, Norwescap, Hunterdon Helpline, the YMCA and other organizations and community members showing up.
And we saw something that community is not an abstract idea. Community is a person stopping to ask what you do, a cashier remembering your name, a local business opening its doors to organizations that are trying to help, a food pantry making sure someone has dinner, a nonprofit helping someone stay housed after an emergency, a neighbor noticing that another neighbor needs help. Community is a whole bunch of people standing in the same place, at the same time, willing to do something.
And sometimes, apparently, it’s just a few local nonprofit employees standing at the end of a checkout line trying very hard not to crush the bread. We put it in the bag. But the most important thing we put in that bag was a reminder that hunger, housing and homelessness are not separate conversations. They are part of the same conversation about whether people in our community enough stability to live, work, raise their families and move forward.
That is why we show up for Hunger Action Month this month and why we will keep showing up.
Hunterdon Promises… Because everyone deserves a home.
- Volunteer with Family Promise – Find a way to share your time, talents or energy with local families.
- Support Our Work – Every contribution helps Family Promise continue preventing and ending homelessness in Hunterdon County.
- Come Have Some Fun With Us – Our fundraising events are another way to support the mission… while having a genuinely good time with the people who make Hunterdon County such a special place.
- Join Hunger Action Month | Feeding America
- Food Security in the U.S. – Media Resources | Economic Research Service
- Child Hunger & Poverty in Hunterdon County, New Jersey | Map the Meal Gap
- Homeless Prevention – Family Promise Of Hunterdon County
- Family Owned: The Colalillo Family | ShopRite
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by Dawn Hartfelder – updated 9/21/2026
