When the government shut down, Kim Archer, executive director of The Help Center Inc., was notified that 126 truckloads of USDA food were on hold. 

“That’s not the majority of the stuff that we put out, but it does make a big difference, of course, not knowing how long they're going to be sitting on their hands before it starts up again,” Archer said. 

The Help Center Inc., also known as the Laura Miller George Help Center, is a food pantry that serves any Audrain County resident. It offers senior and veteran boxes to those who qualify that include pre-packed essential items as well as emergency meal boxes for people without housing.

The Laura Mae’s New to You thrift store located on site is the Help Center’s only steady source of income. 

“When somebody donates an item to us and we sell it in the store, the money comes right across the building and goes right back out to pay the bills and keep our doors open,” Archer said.

Federal operations remain deadlocked, as does the disbursement of supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits and local food pantries such as The Help Center are seeing an uptick in families in need coming through their doors.

Archer said she has noticed people who haven’t used the food pantry in over a year return and in the last two weeks, she has signed up four new families. 

The frozen SNAP benefits mean more and more people are relying solely on the food pantry, but Archer said it’s just not sustainable. 

“We have people that expect to walk in here and have everything they need for meals for a whole month,” she said. “We’re supplementary. We’re meant to get you by for three or four days or to fill in what you're missing.”

Lines at The Help Center were backed up into the food pantry Friday afternoon shortly after they opened and it was one of the longest lines single mother Amy Koenig has seen in a while.

Koenig typically receives $350 a month in SNAP benefits and uses the food pantry when funds are low. She has yet to receive any benefits in November. 

“I’ve got a kid and then I run DoorDash to try to pay bills and, right now, my old man’s not working so all of our money goes toward bills,” she said.

On average, The Help Center serves about 700 families and relies heavily on deliveries from the Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri. However, the food bank has reduced their deliveries as they have less food to distribute.

“There’s times in the past year we’ve had when the actual food supplies become less, but not to the point where we’ve felt like it’s necessary for us to go out and purchase and we are purchasing food now to supply our Help Center,” Jim Kropf, board chairperson of The Help Center Inc. said.

The Help Center has been purchasing items utilizing donations from the community and revenue from the thrift store.

Archer said the food pantry at The Help Center will be fine for November, but if they continue to see the increasingly high volume of people, it will be in trouble come December. 

“Everybody is going through it right now,” Koenig said. 

Roughly two weeks ago, the Salvation Army signed a contract with Walmart that allows its food pantries to set up an online registry where food items and other necessities could be purchased and delivered at no additional cost to the pantry.

Archer has received five deliveries from the partnership and while it helps, the only thing she can do now is take it one day at a time.

The Help Center Inc.’s distribution hours are Monday from noon to 4 p.m., Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Friday from 2-5:30 p.m. The Walmart registry link can be found on The Help Center Inc.s’ Facebook page and donations can be made directly to The Help Center at 409 Fairground St.