People in Hampton Roads are struggling to pay rent, keep up with utility bills — and put food on the table.
A new hunger study by the University of Chicago on behalf of Virginia’s food banks found 43% of households in Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore are food insecure. On the Virginia Peninsula, that rate is even higher at 50%, making it the second highest in the state.
Those numbers are much higher than previously reported in nationwide surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which hovered between 15% and 20% for Hampton Roads — despite the Trump administration’s claims that “trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged” since 2019.
“This survey is just confirming what we've seen on the ground for a long time, which is that our lines are 30% to 40% longer than they've ever been, and we are doing many more transactions than we did even four years ago,” said Chris Tan, CEO of the Food Bank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore, referencing the years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The USDA has reported state-level food insecurity estimates every year for the last three decades, but not this year.
“These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger,” according to the USDA press release announcing the end of the annual survey.
The 2026 statewide study was commissioned by the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, which represents the state’s seven food banks.
Tan said it’s the first hunger study that focuses only on Virginia, which brings what local hunger looks like into sharper focus.
“What we've been noticing more and more is that we're serving working families, families that are working hard to make ends meet and not making enough to make them not have to choose between groceries and rent, groceries and medication (or) groceries and fixing the flat tire that you might have gotten,” Tan said.
The statewide survey used the same questions as the USDA but didn’t filter out people based on income.
“Let's say you said, ‘I have a household of four, and we make $65,000 a year as a household,’” Tan said as an example.
In that scenario, the USDA survey would ask two more questions about food insecurity. If the person answers, “no,” the survey would end and count that household as food secure. But Tan said that uses an incomplete definition of food insecurity.
“There's misconceptions that food insecurity is all your meals are being provided by some type of charitable arm or a food bank,” he said. “For us, food insecurity is you don't know where every meal is going to come from, and so that could cause you to limit what you eat. It could cause you, at times, to unfortunately not feed yourselves but feed your children.”
He said the statewide survey captured those lower tiers of food insecurity that people may not consider at first.
Tan said the results were alarming but not necessarily surprising — especially with rising costs and cuts to public programs like SNAP and Medicaid.
“For every one meal the food bank can provide, SNAP provides nine,” said Bob Latvis, president and CEO of the Virginia Peninsula Food Bank.
About 120,000 Virginians have lost SNAP benefits over the last year. Latvis said that could be because they didn’t meet the new eligibility requirements, which are more difficult to clear, or they weren’t able to navigate the new process.
Latvis said he expects the food insecurity rate to keep climbing as costs get higher and more people lose benefits. It worries him because it means more people will be hungry and it may make the situation seem hopeless to people who might be able to help.
“It’s almost like the national debt,” he said. “You hear trillions and trillions of dollars and you get numb to that. The numbers get so staggering that folks just fear it’s something that cannot be overcome. We can never allow that to happen.”
He said the food bank system is resilient but relies on individual donors, municipalities and corporations to keep people fed.
“The charitable food network is all they have left,” Tan said.
