Community stories: Timika Hopson

I have eight kids between the ages of 12 years old and 6 months. With my partner and I, that’s a total of 10 people. It was expensive to feed and clothe all of us before inflation. Now, there are days when it feels impossible.

We use a passenger van – or as I call it, a church van – as our only vehicle. It used to cost us $60 to fill up. Now every time we fill up it’s $140 – more than twice what we were paying before. The same thing with food – even just the basics like milk and cereal add up fast when the cost of everything is rising. We spent $1,000 at Aldi the other day. We have never had to spend that much on food. We stretch the budget where we can, but we can only do so much stretching before something snaps.

Like every other big family, we pass clothes and toys down between the kids. We get food and clothing and diaper donations when we can. Despite all of that, our income isn’t keeping up with the costs. We need better solutions to help families out right now.

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