When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the economy in early 2020, it derailed a five-year research project comparing Minneapolis and Raleigh—but it unexpectedly opened a window into something more urgent. Caitlin Caspi, an associate professor of allied health sciences at the University of Connecticut and director of food security initiatives for the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, had set out to study how a minimum wage increase affected nutrition and health outcomes. What she and her team discovered instead was a powerful snapshot of how emergency assistance programs can shield the most vulnerable from cascading hardship.
The original study was straightforward: compare two demographically similar cities where one (Minneapolis, Minnesota) had adopted a $15 minimum wage and the other (Raleigh, North Carolina) had not. The hypothesis was logical—higher wages mean greater economic stability, which should reduce food insecurity and allow families to buy more nutritious food. But the pandemic rewrote the script. As wages shifted and federal support programs expanded nationwide, the minimum wage effect vanished. Yet the researchers found something equally important in the data: evidence that expanded SNAP benefits, rental assistance programs, and eviction moratoriums were actively reducing the two hardships that often trap low-income families.
Violeta Chacón, a postdoctoral researcher working with Caspi, led a focused investigation into the connection between housing instability and food insecurity during the pandemic. Her study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, analyzed nearly 1,000 individuals across multiple years—making it one of the first efforts to examine this relationship at such scale. What she found challenges conventional thinking. People experiencing food insecurity or housing instability were indeed more likely to face these problems again. But there was also a striking inverse relationship: someone struggling with housing instability one year was measurably less likely to experience food insecurity the next year, and vice versa.
The explanation lies in how assistance programs interact. "Families who were experiencing housing instability might be seeking out housing assistance programs, which could free up more income for other necessities, which include food," Chacón observed. When a family gets help paying rent, money that would have vanished into housing becomes available for groceries. The pandemic's expanded support systems—SNAP benefits at heightened levels, emergency rental assistance, and the eviction moratorium—created what researchers call "critical protection" by disrupting the cycle where one crisis feeds another.
The evidence extends beyond individual households. Food insecurity levels hit their lowest point across the entire United States in 2021, directly linked to the expanded benefits available at that time. That measurable outcome matters: it proves these programs work, not in theory but in practice, at scale.
Chacón's conclusion points toward possibility rather than resignation: "Those assistance programs that were unusual during those times could provide critical protection. It gives us an idea that it could be done." The pandemic, which revealed how quickly families can fall into instability, also revealed something that policy makers can replicate. Safety nets work best when multiple programs coordinate—nutrition assistance paired with housing support, eviction protection paired with income support. The question facing policymakers is whether the lessons learned during crisis will reshape how America approaches poverty and security in ordinary times.