Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
Houston Food Bank workers supply federal employees with groceries during a drive on Oct. 29, 2025.
When Tracey Porter arrived at Houston ISD’s Barnett Stadium on Wednesday to receive free groceries, it wasn’t an easy task. But she didn’t have much of a choice — she hadn’t received a paycheck in weeks.
She’s also coping with two types of cancer, she said.
“This is horribly embarrassing,” Porter said. “I didn’t set myself up for this. … I’m normally the one that donates. I’ve always been that person that will eat canned goods, or whatever is asked. And now I’m in this line. It took a lot.”
Sitting in her black SUV, Porter, who said she works for the FBI, was in one car among hundreds. The Houston Food Bank had arranged this food drive specifically for federal workers, most of whom have missed their last paycheck in full as well as another one in part as an extended government shutdown drags on.
There are tens of thousands of federal workers in the Houston region. The Federal Reserve of St. Louis estimates that number to be around 36,500 as of August. Not all of them have been furloughed. Others, like Porter, are still working without pay.
“Now, it’s very frustrating, because it’s like, ‘Wait, OK, now I have to show that same dedication without getting the check to pay my bills?’ ” Porter told a Houston Public Media reporter. “It feels like I’m not being taken care of, but I still am expected to take care of everyone else. I mean, I’m going to do my job, because that’s what I swore an oath to. But it just breaks my heart that this is where we are.”
Dozens of Houston Food Bank representatives packed her car, and others like it, with watermelons, oranges and other essential grocery items. Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank, told Hello Houston on Wednesday that the bank prepares emergency boxes of goods in preparation for hurricane season.
Without any hurricanes, that means some 20,000 boxes of groceries are now being put to use for federal workers on Wednesday — and SNAP recipients down the road.
“The longer the shutdown goes — it’s not just that it goes that much longer — the worse it will get,” Greene said. “There’s a big difference between missing one paycheck and missing three or four paychecks.”
Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, places a bag of oranges in the bed of a truck at a food drive on Oct. 29, 2025.
When SNAP benefits are set to expire in November, the Houston Food Bank is planning to hold multiple food drives throughout the month, as soon as this Saturday. At the federal level, lawmakers have floated the idea of temporarily funding the food distribution program.
U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, told Houston Public Media he wants to use a contingency fund of money set aside for future emergencies to fund SNAP temporarily, though that would require adding as much as $3 billion to fully fund the month of November.
“I don’t want to see people go one day without something that they have earned,” Green said. “It’s just not right to ask people to work and not get paid and then expect them to take care of the necessities of life. It’s just not right.”
Green was at the Houston Food Bank’s drive on Wednesday, placing groceries into people’s cars. A spokesperson for the food bank said it had around 580 federal workers registered to accept groceries, including Porter.
Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
As many as 500 federal workers showed up to Houston ISD’s Barnett Stadium for a food drive on Oct. 29, 2025.
“When I saw the line, I cried all the way to the back of it,” she said. “Because you think you’re in it alone, and then you see the line of people, and that just makes it even more stressful, because you know that you can’t help them.”
Porter has worked in the federal government for more than two decades, she said. This isn’t her first shutdown, but she’s still recovering financially from the previous shutdown in 2018, when she had to take out a loan to make ends meet.
This time, though, Porter faces a new uncertainty: dual diagnoses of colon and thyroid cancer, she said.
“You know, we’re not at war, there’s no big catastrophe that’s going on that would force [federal workers] into a line,” Porter said. “It’s just some people disagreeing that’s forcing them to have to put their pride aside and get in line. It’s awful.”