TL;DR
- Cost of living is the top concern for many voters this fall. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 47% of registered voters call it the single most important factor in their midterm vote.
- Grocery inflation has cooled: the USDA's Food Price Outlook puts grocery prices up 2.2% over the past year. But a slower climb does not equal a lower price.
- Nearly 48 million people, including more than 14 million children, were food insecure in 2024, per Feeding America's latest Map the Meal Gap report. Close to half of them earned too much to qualify for federal food assistance, per the same report, as well as Feeding America.
- SNAP enrollment has fallen more than 13% in a year, faster than federal officials projected, and food banks say they can't fill the gap.
- Nearly half of renters — 22.7 million households — are cost-burdened, per Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Homelessness dipped slightly in 2025 but remains near record levels.
- New tax rules make giving to charity easier to deduct for many people, and there are concrete ways to help, whatever your budget.
The math in your head at the checkout line
You know the moment. You're standing at the register, and somewhere between the milk and the coffee you're adding it up in your head. Do you put something back? Skip the good produce this week? Push the electric bill a few days?
If that's familiar, you're in enormous company. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted August 28–31 of this year, 47% of registered voters said cost of living would be the single most important factor in how they vote in November. And it isn't just a city-and-suburbs story: a June Reuters/Ipsos poll found rural approval of the administration's handling of cost-of-living issues at just 31%, with rural Americans citing rising grocery and gas prices as the reason.
This isn't one party's worry. Ipsos has found that cost of living ranks as the top issue for close to half of registered voters regardless of political affiliation.
Underneath all of it are two very human needs: eating and having somewhere to live. When either one gets shaky, it shows up at the ballot box.
The grocery aisle: slower, but not cheaper
The good news first. According to USDA's Economic Research Service, the grocery-store (food-at-home) price index was unchanged from July to August 2026 and only 2.2% higher than a year earlier — a real cooling from earlier in the year.
But here's what a slower rise actually means: prices are still going up, just less quickly, on top of the big jumps of recent years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that overall inflation ran 3.4% for the 12 months ending in August, with energy costs up sharply and eggs alone rising 2.9% in the month of August. Eating out is getting pricier too, with restaurant menu prices up 3.4% from a year ago.
For families already stretched thin, the gap can be stark. Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap study found that people in food-insecure households said they needed about $23.16 more per person, per week just to have enough food. Added up nationally, that's more than a $33 billion shortfall, with the average meal costing $3.70.
Hunger also isn't only about the very poorest. Feeding America's own analysis estimates that 21 million people — 47% of everyone experiencing food insecurity — may not even qualify for SNAP, because federal and state income limits leave them just above the cutoff. They're working, and they're still stuck in the middle, with no bridge.
The safety net is changing, and people are feeling it
SNAP (the program many still call food stamps) is the country's largest food assistance program, and it's in the middle of major change. Enrollment has dropped from 42.2 million in May 2025 to 36.6 million in May 2026 — a decline of more than 13% in a year, faster than federal officials had projected.
Who is affected? Under the new work requirements, adults ages 55 to 64 and parents of teens 14 to 17 now generally have to work, volunteer, or attend school to keep benefits, and people experiencing homelessness are no longer exempt.
People interpret this differently, and it's fair to say so. Some point to the drop as a possible sign of people moving into work. Others, including Arizona state officials quoted by PBS NewsHour, point instead to paperwork and verification hurdles cutting off people who still qualify — Arizona's enrollment fell 55% in a year, which the state attributes largely to its own struggles implementing the new rules, and it has since added staff and online document submission to slow the losses.
Meanwhile, food banks are feeling it. In New Mexico, a Roadrunner Food Bank leader told a U.S. senator that demand rose 79% between January 2025 and January 2026, driven both by people who lost SNAP and by people who never qualified but are squeezed by grocery prices.
Keys, rent, and the "one bad month" problem
Food is usually the first thing families squeeze when housing eats too much of the paycheck. That's why the two issues are tangled together.
Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies found that in 2024, a record 22.7 million renter households — 49% of all renters — spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Some 12.1 million of those were paying more than half their income for housing. Part of the reason is supply: from 2014 to 2024, units renting for under $1,400 fell by 9.3 million, while units at $1,400 or more grew by 11.8 million.
There is one glimmer of good news: rents have softened a bit, with asking rents for professionally managed apartments down 0.6% year over year by the end of 2025, per the same JCHS report. A small dip doesn't undo years of increases, though.
When the squeeze becomes too much, some people lose their housing entirely. HUD's one-night count in January 2025 found 745,652 people experiencing homelessness. That's about 3% lower than the 2024 count, and the first year-over-year decline since 2016. But the picture is mixed: chronic homelessness hit a record high of nearly 156,000 people, and — per the National Low Income Housing Coalition's analysis of HUD's data — rural and suburban areas together now account for more than 40% of homelessness nationally. It isn't only a big-city story.
What's actually on the ballot?
You'll hear a lot of promises this fall. Here's what's actually being proposed and debated in Washington right now, from both sides, on the issues in this piece.
Where both parties have already agreed: On housing, Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act with strong bipartisan votes — 85–5 in the Senate and 358–32 in the House — and it became law in July without the president's signature. It streamlines environmental reviews for affordable housing and bars corporate landlords that own at least 350 houses from buying more. The National Association of Realtors is now pushing Congress for a further slate of supply-focused housing bills.
What Democrats are proposing: House Democrats, through the New Democrat Coalition's "Affordability Agenda," have built their 2026 message around lowering five costs: health care, housing, energy, family care, and groceries. On the food side specifically, two bills capture where the party wants to go: Sen. Ben Ray Luján's Restoring Food Security for American Families and Farmers Act, co-sponsored by 46 other senators, would repeal the SNAP work-requirement expansion and cost-sharing changes entirely; Rep. Alma Adams' Improving Access to Nutrition Act takes a narrower approach, repealing just the work-requirement disqualification. On housing and groceries, Democrats have also called for rolling back tariffs they say are raising import-dependent grocery and household costs. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said that if Democrats retake the House, reversing Medicaid cuts tied to the same 2025 law would also be an early priority, given how closely health costs and food costs intersect for the same households.
What Republicans are proposing: The party's message centers on framing 2025's tax law — which cut taxes on tips, overtime pay, and for seniors — as the affordability fix already in motion, while resisting a rollback of the SNAP work requirements. Republican leaders on the House Agriculture Committee have argued that work requirements move people toward self-sufficiency rather than long-term dependence on the program. On new proposals, the conservative group Advancing American Freedom, founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, released 'Affordability 101,' a report laying out more than 100 recommendations to lower housing, energy, food, and health care costs mainly by cutting regulation and boosting supply and competition rather than adding new federal spending — a template several Republican lawmakers have pointed to. Congressional Republicans are also weighing a temporary pause on the federal gas tax, floated by President Trump, and the Senate is moving on the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would stop utility customers from absorbing the electricity costs of data centers built in their areas.
Where the parties genuinely disagree, in plain terms: Democrats want to repeal or soften the SNAP work-requirement expansion and the cost-shift to states; Republicans want to keep it, arguing it's already working as intended. Democrats favor more direct federal spending and consumer-facing rules (Medicaid restoration, tariff rollbacks); Republicans favor deregulation and supply-side fixes plus the tax cuts already enacted. Both parties, notably, back doing more on housing supply — the disagreement there is more about how much further to go, not whether to act at all.
We're not here to tell you how to vote. That's yours to decide. But it can help to approach researching candidates' stances with a few specific questions in mind: Does the candidate support keeping or repealing the current SNAP work requirements? What specifically does the candidate think would bring down the constituents' grocery and housing costs, on top of what's already law? The midterms are November 3.
If this is you (or someone you love)
If you're the one doing the checkout-line math, please hear this: needing help is not a personal failing. Food insecurity is present in every community in America. Here are some things that can help lighten the burden:
- Find a food bank near you. Feeding America has a local food bank finder. Using a pantry for a few months can free up money for rent or a utility bill.
- Recheck SNAP eligibility if you lost benefits. Some people lost benefits over documentation, not because they stopped qualifying. Contact your state agency and ask what's changed.
- Talk about it early. Whether it's a landlord, a utility, or a family member, reaching out before you're behind gives you more options.
If you want to help
Maybe you're doing okay right now and looking at all this with a heavy heart. Here's where generosity can go the furthest.
Food banks have said they can't replace what SNAP provides — the two need to work together. Giving is powerful, and it works best alongside a healthy public safety net.
Ways to give:
- Give money. Food banks stretch a dollar further than most of us can at a grocery store. You can check any charity's rating through Charity Navigator.
- Give time. Feeding America runs Hunger Action Month every September and welcomes volunteers at local food banks.
- Give locally for housing. Local shelters and rental-assistance programs are often small and stretched — a modest gift helps them help others.
The tax angle (a small silver lining): Starting with the 2026 tax year, people who take the standard deduction can deduct up to $1,000 ($2,000 for joint filers) in cash gifts to qualifying charities — a new above-the-line deduction under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Itemizers, meanwhile, face a new floor: only giving above 0.5% of income is deductible, so some donors may choose to "bunch" several years of gifts into one. The non-itemizer deduction covers direct cash gifts to charities, not donor-advised funds. Everyone's situation is different, so it's worth a quick conversation with a tax professional.
The bottom line
Behind every statistic here is someone deciding what to put back on the shelf. Hunger and homelessness aren't abstract policy problems. Whether you're worried about your own budget, worried about a loved one's, or both, you have real options: look for help when you need it, give what you can when you can, and use your vote and voice to promote positive change.
