Learn About Hunger
More than one million people within the Houston Food Bank’s service area are food insecure. Learn about hunger in our community.
What Causes Food Insecurity?
Food insecurity is driven by not having an affordable home, access to healthcare, and a good job that pays enough. When there is a gap in between your income and basic need expenses like housing, you can find yourself making tough choices. Do you remember a time when you had to cut back on groceries because everything else was just too expensive? Or maybe you know someone who has faced this challenge. It’s a tough reality for far too many people, and one fraught with myths and misapprehensions.
Economic Security
Economic Security – represents a state where individuals and families can consistently meet their basic needs, plan for the future, and recover from setbacks without continuously falling back into crisis.
It creates a pathway for families to move beyond survival and toward resilience, ensuring they no longer need to rely on charitable food assistance as a lifeline. Economic security is not a single milestone—it is built through multiple, interconnected factors.
Take the Tough Choices Challenge
Families experiencing food insecurity have to decide what to pay for instead of food. Try our Tough Choices exercise and see if you can afford enough nutritious foods for your family after you pay for your other basic needs.
Scenario: You are a family of four. You and your spouse are the parents to Sarah who is 9 years old and in the 4th grade, and Bryan who is 3. You work full-time as a warehouse worker and make $12/hour ($1,920 gross/month). Your spouse works as a personal care aid for $10.50/hr where Sarah goes to school. Your spouse makes $10.5/hour ($1,680 gross/month). Your family’s combined total income each month is $3,600, which is about $30,600 per year after taxes. Can you make necessary life decisions on housing, transportation, childcare and household/food needs — and not to run out of money? Take the challenge.
Now, imagine an emergency happened.
What was left in your budget?
Food becomes your flexible choice; buying cheaper less nutritious food or not eating so at least your children can.
Food insecurity is driven by economic insecurity – high housing costs, low wages, public benefits that end before families are making a stable wage. This only changes when together we advocate for #changeforbetterlives.
Share the Tough Choices Challenge on your social media.
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