One bin, one sign, one mission: How a Little Free Pantry is filling the SNAP gap in Chicago’s south suburbs

HOMEWOOD, Ill. - On a quiet dead-end street at 17659 S. Western Avenue in Homewood , Ill., Rachel Smith’s front yard doesn’t look like the front line of a movement. But tucked beneath a small canopy, lined with plastic storage bins and handwritten labels, something remarkable is happening.

Her yard has become ground zero for an extraordinary idea born not from policy or profit, but from a problem too many Americans now face: a gap in the grocery line that no benefit can fill.

What we know:

"It started small," Smith said. "Just one storage bin and a handwritten sign that said Little Free Pantry. I figured, if I put it out there, maybe somebody would come. And they did."

A response to shrinking SNAP benefits

As federal SNAP benefits were scaled back, families across Illinois began