Nearly 796,500 people across the North Texas Food Bank's 12-county service area, which includes Rockwall County, now lack reliable access to enough food. Over a third of them are children.

Those numbers come from Feeding America's 2026 Map the Meal Gap study, released Tuesday, July 28, which found Texas remains the nation's most food-insecure state for the third consecutive year. The rate climbed from 17.6% to 19.4%, an increase of roughly 500,000 people statewide.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth region alone, nearly 1.4 million residents are food insecure, including more than 506,000 children. One in four D/FW children now faces hunger.

"There are no surprises in this report for us because we've been feeding these needs," North Texas Food Bank President and CEO Trisha Cunningham told the Dallas Morning News. "But what surprised me was the size of the increase."

The problem isn't limited to households in poverty. About 54% of food-insecure people in the D/FW area earn above the income threshold for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, according to the report. Rising costs for housing, groceries, utilities, and health care are pushing working families to choose between a full pantry and other bills.

Local organizations feel the strain

Rockwall County Helping Hands, the county's primary social services nonprofit, has expanded rapidly to meet growing demand. The organization opened its new Reeves and Johnson Campus in 2025, which includes a neighbor-choice food pantry, a larger medical clinic, and a thrift store that funds roughly 45% of its annual operating budget. Last November, a North Texas Food Bank grant helped Helping Hands purchase a walk-in freezer and additional pantry supplies.

Jon Bailey, who has led Helping Hands as president and CEO since 2015, said in a November 2025 North Texas Food Bank blog post that the organization's mission is ensuring no one in Rockwall County goes to bed hungry. As we reported July 30, Helping Hands recently formalized a year-round partnership with Toys for Tots after equipping 1,800 students with backpacks.

The need is growing.

Taylor, a Rockwall ISD special education teacher who visits the Helping Hands pantry with his wife to feed their four children, put it plainly in that same blog post: "Really, this is the difference between us eating or not." Both he and his wife work for the district.

Summer compounds the pressure. Children who rely on free school breakfasts and lunches during the academic year lose that safety net when classes end, forcing families to cover every meal.

Seniors hit hard

Food insecurity among adults 60 and older jumped significantly in the D/FW area, with an estimated 154,500 seniors now facing hunger. Statewide, one in seven Texas seniors is food insecure, up from one in eight the prior year.

Calls to the United Ways of Texas 211 helpline seeking food assistance climbed 28.6% between February and June 2026, and requests for home-delivered meals rose about 23% over the same period, according to Yahoo News reporting on the study.

Where to get help

Catholic Charities Dallas and the North Texas Food Bank are operating a Mobile Community Pantry at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, 1305 Damascus Road in Rockwall, with distribution dates running through September.

Residents seeking food assistance or wanting to volunteer can reach: