On the West End of Wall Street Trinity Church Feeds New York's Hungry | The Guardian

Trinity’s strength lies in being both a direct service provider and a funder of other charities, a versatility that allows the organization to address a wide range of needs. 

• Trinity spent $1.6m to provide 2.5m meals in 2024, and $3.3m has been spent to provide 5m meals in 2025 so far.

Inside the church’s Compassion Market, things move quickly. Volunteers push carts, restock shelves and greet families in multiple languages.As the wind chill dropped temperatures further and the line outside still stretched on, people were continuously filed in a practiced efficiency. 

• With the December holiday season quickly approaching, the work isn’t going to slow down.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Cordero said. “To give folks what they need that they aren’t getting elsewhere.”

Bread, diapers and hope: How Trinity Church feeds New York’s hungry

Marina Dunbar and Maya Yang in New York

Sat 29 Nov 2025 09.00 EST

Last modified on Sat 29 Nov 2025 18.07 EST

 

Trinity church in New York, 25 November 2025, had to later devise a new way to line visitors outside due to surging demand.

Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian

 

U.S. families queue for groceries, hot meals and baby supplies as demand at Trinity’s Compassion Market soars

On a chilly morning in Lower Manhattan this month, the line outside Trinity Commons, a modern extension of New York’s historic Trinity church, stretched on past the end of the block.

Hundreds of people were standing in the 44F cold, many with young children, waiting to get their turn for the Compassion Market food bank.

“It’s all the way down the block today,” said Vidia Cordero, the church’s deputy chief community impact officer. 

• The bank had been open less than an hour and they had “already had 250 or so inside”.

In total, the famous church on Broadway saw more than 1,000 people the previous week on Tuesday and Thursday alone, the days on which the food bank is open. The immense number of people in need has now become the new normal.

Cordero described a staggering growth in the number of visitors since the federal government began withholding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits as part of the recent, record-long government shutdown.  

• But the increase in hunger began well before that, with food prices going up steadily since the start of the year as the burden of Donald Trump’s tariffs andstubborn inflation have been felt across the U.S.

An October study from S&P Global revealed that companies were expected to pay at least $1.2tn more in 2025 expenses than was previously anticipated. But the burden, according to the researchers, is now shifting to US consumers. They calculated that two-thirds of the “expense shock”, more than $900bn, will be absorbed by Americans. Last month, the Yale Budget Lab estimated tariffs would cost households almost $2,400 more a year. 

• As further evidence of the affordability crisis, the average cost of groceries for a family of four in the US has climbed to a record $1,030 per month, according to the Kobeissi Letter. 
• This marks an increase of $280 since 2017, when the average family spent $750 a month.

Due to the surge in demand, the church had to come up with a new way to line the visitors up outside. By the end of this particular day, Cordero estimated they would have have served at least 550 people.

The church’s location could not be more of a contrast if it tried. 

• Not only does its gothic revival style architecture stand out among the Manhattan skyscrapers, but the building is quite literally opposite Wall Street.

LINK: Trinity Church Feeds New York's Hungry