On Tuesday, volunteers at Food Bank of the Rockies' mobile food pantry in El Jebel doled out bags of groceries to a line of cars moving through the parking lot.
On an average day, they see around 180 cars, serving as many as 600 people throughout the region.
One of the volunteers, Cecilia Perez, has volunteered at the mobile food pantry for four years. "Today, we have a lot more people than we had before," she said. "We're seeing a lot of need in the community."
According to data from the local food bank Lift-Up, visits to its pantries have risen 138% since 2022. In Pitkin County, 10% of people are food insecure, while in Eagle and Garfield Counties, the numbers are 9% and 8%, respectively.
Several factors have contributed to the increase, from a rising cost of living in the region to the expiration of pandemic-related benefits.
For instance, Congress increased the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, known as SNAP, in 2020, but legislators let those benefits expire in 2023.
Other recent cuts to government benefits have also had an impact, said Elyse Hottel, Lift-Up's interim executive director.
"We're seeing reductions in Medicaid, SNAP and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) eligibility, and then there's proposed billion-dollar cuts in federal aid for food support."
Colorado also faces a massive budget shortfall of between $670 million and $1 billion. The state will have to make significant cuts, and essential programs that many families depend on — including food assistance — could lose funding.
"They're not really in a place to backfill any of the programs that are getting cut at the federal level," said Hottel.
She added that close to 30% of people in the region are forced to choose between housing and food.
Those financial woes trace back to the COVID-19 era, which hit workers in the local tourism industry hardest. "They burned through a lot of their savings during that time," Hottel said. "So now they have no cushion to fall back on as well."
For women and minorities, those challenges are even greater.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rates of food insecurity are more than twice as high for households headed by a single woman with children compared to the national average.
Women are often responsible for caregiving and domestic work, including securing and preparing food.
"I think it sometimes falls on women because we know what's missing in the house," said Perez. "It's women who end up having to make sure there's food on the table for our children."
That resonates with Jamileh Lopez Ocana, the operations manager for Food Bank of the Rockies's Western Slope Distribution.
As a single mother, she struggles to afford housing and childcare for her two kids.
"I've been a food bank recipient a lot of my life," she said.
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