IMPACT 211 is a free, confidential hotline that people can call for help with basic needs in southeastern Wisconsin. In addition to helping with food and housing support, the calls to 211 provide a snapshot of the region’s social safety net.
John Hyatt leads the organization, and Bob Waite handles data collection. The two say that the word of the year for 2025 is “uncertainty” — as calls for basic needs have jumped over 100% in some areas, and organizations that provide resources for these needs face uncertain financial futures.
Hyatt and Waite discuss what they’ve seen in 2025, and what they expect in 2026. If you're looking for help finding food, clothing, housing or other basic needs, you can dial 2-1-1, text your ZIP Code to TXT-211 (898-211), or use IMPACT's online chat.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
John Hyatt: Yeah, it’s the word that a lot of people are using: “uncertainty.” At every level, at a local level with local government and funding, with foundations and funding, at a federal level with funding. So, as lead of IMPACT, I’m making sure enough money is coming in so that we can keep doing our work. That’s the uncertain part of it. I used to say that was a year-to-year proposition. More recently, it’s become month-to-month. So there’s that uncertainty.
Our work depends on relationships with a lot of other organizations who are also trying to work their way through all of that uncertainty. During COVID, when we said we’re all in this together, it’s feeling like we’re all in it together again. At the community-based organization level, we’re sort of the bottom rung of the ladder. So funding and information flow down to us, and by the time it gets to us, you’re all of a sudden in react mode. So it’s causing us to make adjustments on the fly, which is not impossible. We’re used to doing that. But these are things where you’re going from a certain level of staffing to be able to serve callers and people in need of help. All of a sudden, you don’t have as many folks as you used to.
Woods: Bob, as IMPACT’s data guy, what have you seen this year? Are there any notable jumps in calls for particular services or geographic areas? Anything that stands out in the call data we've received this year?
Bob Waite: What we’ve seen, especially since the flooding event in August, is some really drastic changes in the types of resources people are looking for. I guess it wouldn’t be too surprising that basic needs resource contacts have risen. In some Milwaukee County ZIP codes, in fact, it’s gone up by 50% to 60%. That’s very unusual to see that kind of an increase in such a short period of time. Overall, throughout southeastern Wisconsin, food resource requests have gone up nearly 60%. And that includes, in Kenosha County, for instance, a 123% increase. In Racine County, an increase of 63%. In Washington County, over a 100% increase in requests for food resources. Some of this could be attributed not only to the after-effects of the flooding event, but also to the uncertainty that’s been taking place for those households that are somewhat reliant on the FoodShare program to meet their food needs. As I think you know, there was a period of time in November when the FoodShare benefit was not provided to those individuals. So they were calling us. They were accessing emergency food resources in the communities where they live, and that contributed to that increase as well.
The other thing that we’ve seen in Milwaukee County since the flooding event is an increase in the number of people looking for clothing and personal and household goods. Just in that period, it’s gone up 14%. It doesn’t seem like a huge jump, but it’s a little bit different than food, where people may call us every single week for a food referral. But to see that kind of a jump in such a short period of time for a real specific type of need that may not necessarily be very common is kind of unusual. So that’s what we’ve seen so far.
What we’re going to be looking at in the future is that it got really cold really early this year. What that’s going to mean is that people who are already working paycheck to paycheck or barely making ends meet are now going to be faced with higher utility bills. So how does that affect a household? That might mean that they are wanting to keep up with their utility bills so they don’t have a huge bill to pay in the spring, but that might mean they’re going to cut back on buying new clothing. That means that they may use their disposable income to pay the utility bill or to pay for other things, meaning they may need to access emergency food resources in the community again. There is a domino effect with all these things going on, and some of these things don’t get resolved overnight. So what does that mean in 2026, with continued uncertainty and not really being sure if all those safety net services are going to be adequate to take care of themselves.
Woods: How does this moment compare to other years in recent memory? Are these challenges new?
Hyatt: I think they are. I think what’s different is that when we had things like this in the past, they were sort of transitional. We were going to get through a pandemic. We were going to get through a financial crisis, those kinds of things. But these feel like shifts at the federal level that are here to stay for at least a while. So the cuts and the shifts are so deep and so drastic that you’re trying to think, how can we make our way through this without losing a lot of organizations and a lot of people along the way? I saw information today that there might be some subsidies for farmers on the horizon as part of a reaction to tariffs and what that has meant for farmers. So maybe if it gets to that point with farmers, maybe it’ll get to some of this with housing and some of that kind of stuff, where they will start to rethink and put some things back in place. I know that hope isn’t a strategy, but we’re hopeful that some things can get better.
Waite: I would say the one big shift that we experienced was during the economic downturn that started in 2007 and stretched into 2009, early 2010. We saw a huge increase in the number of calls because more people were out of work. But at that time, the philanthropic community stepped in and was able to help organizations because there was increased need. The community was able to respond because there was a built-in set of resources available to help people out and to help those organizations out. It’s not like that now. And like John is saying, we’re experiencing some cutbacks in funding, but everybody is, and everybody’s approaching the foundations for the same reason we are. This is very different from that scenario. And I think John is accurate in saying, you know, this is very, very different and very unique compared with what we’ve experienced in doing this kind of work.
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