Our View: Preparing For Rough Waters

What will it look like in the fall, when kids are back in school and businesses are laying off folks as summer visitors return home and the steady stream of vehicles coming to the Cape every week begins to dry up? Most likely, it will be different from past years.

 In the past, visitors from Europe and Canada helped boost the fall economy, but indications, at least anecdotally, are that those numbers will be down. With prices inching up due to many factors, including President Trump’s tariffs, many economists are pessimistic about the economy’s outlook. In the past, the Lower Cape has been somewhat immune from minor economic fluctuations, and while we hope that will be the case, there are signs of rough waters ahead.

 As Gov. Maura Healey pointed out during her visit to the Family Pantry of Cape Cod last week, cuts to federal food aid programs are likely to increase food insecurity across the state, including here, where that metric traditionally increases in the fall and winter as summer jobs evaporate. The pantry currently serves more than 800 families every week, an astonishing number that just keeps inching higher. Healey’s new anti-hunger task force will work to find ways to fill gaps in the state’s hunger safety net. All we can say is that the task force better get to work, because the gaps are likely to widen quickly.

 In Massachusetts and other blue states, state government is likely to help fill some of the gaps that federal cuts to education, SNAP and other programs will create. But we certainly can’t take that for granted, and those of us with the means will need to reach deep to help our fellow Cape residents. The Chronicle’s ongoing Summertime Helping Neighbors fund drive is one way to help ensure that the Family Pantry has the resources to meet what could be a tsunami of need. Any donation, no matter how small, will help provide healthy meals to some of those more than 800 local families who rely on the pantry on a regular basis. To contribute, click here. Tax-deductible contribution can also be mailed to The Family Pantry, 133 Queen Anne Rd., Harwich, MA 02645.

 With uncertainty at the state level and the federal government seemingly abandoning those in most need, neighbors need to help neighbors.