With bills piling up and demand rising, volunteers in the Third Ward ramp up food distributions.

HOUSTON — On Friday night in the Third Ward, Richard Andrews pulled his Wheel One Mobile Pantry truck into a parking lot off Martin Luther King Boulevard and began unloading boxes of food — this time with federal employees in mind.

Even though the government shutdown ended earlier this week, Andrews said many workers are still digging out from weeks of missed paychecks.

“Postal employees, we even got a call from somebody with the IRS. Everybody is affected by the shutdown,” he said.

Andrews, who started the mobile pantry nearly six years ago during the COVID-19 shutdown, said the need for food assistance has only grown since then. The pantry usually opens every Saturday, “rain, sleet or shine,” he said, but this week, he added an extra day to meet the heightened demand.

“Now you have bills that are due from almost two months ago,” Andrews said. “You have people who are behind on bills and stuff like that.”

While the evening was set aside to help federal workers, Andrews emphasized that no one is turned away.

“Some people are disabled, they come by Metro, and we service everybody over here,” he said. “Just like those ladies we saw over there, two elderly women with a small child. I mean, how could you turn them away? We see that a lot. We turn no one down.”

Inside the Foundation for Black Heritage and Cultural Center, volunteers worked to assemble care boxes. Director Cynthia Nailah Nelson said the need spans all ages and backgrounds.

“It is a people, a human issue and need, and we seek to address that,” Nelson said.

She welcomed donations of any kind, money, canned goods, fresh food, and said the pantry can always find families who need help. What they lack most, she said, is manpower.

“We have plenty of recipients, but we need someone to help us get the distributions out to the people,” Nelson said.

Even so, volunteers continued loading cars and delivering boxes until supplies ran out. They planned to start again the next morning.

For Andrews, it’s simple: keep showing up and keep feeding the community, one week at a time.

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