New Jersey could lose up to 47,000 SNAP recipients in any given month as new federal work requirements take hold, according to figures from the New Jersey Department of Human Services. “It’s larger than Montclair and Glen Ridge put together,” Anne Mernin, executive director of Toni’s Kitchen, told Farnoosh and Mike. Toni’s Kitchen has fed Montclair since 1982 and is already watching the early effects of those cuts show up. Most of the households affected aren’t out of work either: the majority of SNAP recipients who aren’t retired already have jobs. They just can’t make rent, transportation, health care and groceries work all at the same time.
That gap is exactly where the organizations below step in. What follows is Montclair’s current guide to food and housing resources. Use it yourself, or pass it along to someone who needs it.
Where Can You Find Food Assistance in Montclair?
Food insecurity in Montclair is easy to miss, Mernin said, because it doesn’t look the way a crisis is supposed to look. There’s no line outside a pantry that the whole town has seen, no obvious marker of who’s struggling and who isn’t. That’s because food insecurity isn’t only hunger. Hunger is not having eaten yet today. Food insecurity is not knowing, week after week, whether there will be enough, and in Montclair, it rarely looks like an emergency from the outside. Here’s where that need actually gets met.
Toni’s Kitchen
Toni’s Kitchen has run out of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church since 1982, when the church hired a cook named Antoinette Green and the ministry quietly took her nickname. Today, under Mernin, it offers a wide range of help. The centerpiece is its Choice Pantry, at 73 S. Fullerton Ave., open Wednesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to noon, where guests shop a farmers-market-style setup instead of taking a prepackaged box and can connect on-site with roughly 25 community partner organizations, everything from a mobile dental van to legal services and nutrition counseling. Beyond the pantry, the organization runs sit-down meals and meals to go, TK Delivers, its home delivery program for seniors and people managing serious medical issues, Toni’s Grill, a food truck that visits different neighborhoods, and Toni’s Closet, a free clothing shop open most days of the week. A lot of the organization’s work also happens off-site, through Mobile Markets that bring groceries directly to schools, libraries, senior buildings and other faith communities around Montclair, Bloomfield and West Orange. You can reach out to them at hello@toniskitchen.org or 973-932-0768.
Human Needs Food Pantry
Founded the same year at 9 Label St., Human Needs Food Pantry operates at a different scale. They are open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon for donation drop-offs, and from noon to 2:30 p.m. for client pick-up. Registered clients can pick up a grocery bag with fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and pantry staples like pasta, rice and canned goods, plus personal-care items such as soap and shampoo when available. In 2024, the pantry distributed more than 1 million pounds of food and registered 1,817 new households, and that number kept climbing into 2025. Volunteer drivers also deliver to clients who can’t get there themselves. Upstairs, in that same Label Street building, a donation-run room offers free clothing, shoes and housewares. You can contact them at 973-746-4669 or hnfpdirector@gmail.com. Listen to our conversation with Director Mike Bruno.
We are open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 a.m. to noon for donation drop-offs, and from noon to 2:30 p.m. for client pick-up.
MESH
Montclair Emergency Services for Hope runs MESH Cafe, a sit-down dinner Monday through Saturday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at 619 Bloomfield Ave., a restaurant space donated for the program. “There are a lot of hardworking families throughout Essex County that are just barely covering their rent,” Joe Granger, MESH’s executive director, told the Pod last summer. “As rents escalate, that’s a bigger problem. The number of unhoused and food-insecure people is increasing—it’s a bigger and bigger job.”
Little Free Pantries
For the lowest barrier of all, Montclair is part of a network of more than a dozen Little Free Pantries across town and several neighboring towns, organized by the Northeast Earth Coalition since 2020. They’re stocked entirely by volunteers, open around the clock and require nothing from anyone who stops by. A 2023 count listed 11 sites including the lawn outside First Congregational Church at 40 S. Fullerton Ave. and the Hawthorne Place side of the Bnai Keshet at 99 S. Fullerton Ave.; check the coalition’s current listings for the full, up-to-date map.
Help Specifically for Seniors
Montclair’s Department of Senior Services keeps its own directory of food help, and the township’s actual Meals on Wheels program runs through Chrill Care, also known as Mobile Meals of Essex County, at 973-744-0473, for homebound residents 60 and older who can’t prepare their own meals. The same office can connect seniors to the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program, $20 in seasonal vouchers good at participating farmers markets, and congregate meal sites around town.
Food, it turns out, is the easier problem to solve. Finding a bed for the night gets harder every winter.
Where Can You Find Emergency Shelter in Montclair?
Montclair didn’t always need a formal system for this. “There used to be a lot of what we used to call SRO type housing or rooming houses along Claremont and South Park,” Mernin said. “There was just a lot more accommodation for different socioeconomic groups.” That kind of housing stock is mostly gone now, and with it, the room someone used to have to land before falling out of housing altogether. What’s left runs through a small number of formal organizations instead.
MESH Overnight Winter Respite
MESH’s overnight winter respite opens at St. Mark’s, 51 Elm St. Doors open at 8 p.m. whenever the temperature drops to 32 degrees or below. It is not a year-round shelter. It is a response to a specific, predictable danger. [Overnight Winter Respite for 2025-2026 ended on March 31st, according to its website.]
Family Promise of Essex County
Family Promise of Essex County, now at 60 S. Fullerton Ave., Suite 205, runs three programs: prevention and diversion aimed at keeping families housed before they lose a home at all, emergency shelter housing, and a housing and stabilization program that includes free after-school care, so a housing crisis does not automatically become a school attendance crisis too. To start, fill out the organization’s online assessment form, which isn’t itself an application; an intake worker follows up by phone or email on a first-come, first-served basis once they have it. If you need shelter immediately, call the main office at 973-746-1400 during business hours, or 211 nights, weekends and holidays.
The Salvation Army’s Cornerstone House
Cornerstone House is the only shelter of its kind in suburban Essex County, serving 23 people who don’t qualify for shelter through the state Division of Family and Benefits, in a drug-and-alcohol-free environment. Families get private baths there; individuals share dormitory-style rooms, four to a room. Every resident works with a Salvation Army case manager to build a plan toward stable, permanent housing, not just a bed for the night. To be considered, call the shelter directly at 973-744-3312.
Nancy’s Place
Run by Covenant House New Jersey, Nancy’s Place is an eight-bed home on Montclair’s South Willow Street for young people ages 18 to 21 who are facing homelessness and also living with a diagnosed mental health condition. Staff are on site around the clock, and residents share a household, cooking, cleaning and building the skills they’ll need once they leave. Access starts with Covenant House’s 24/7 crisis line, 973-621-8705, or by texting 844-912-1291. Covenant House also runs a separate supportive apartment-living program in Montclair for older teens who’ve already developed the skills to live with minimal supervision.
Who Helps With Long-Term Housing in Montclair?
HomeCorp
HomeCorp, at 17 Talbot St., has built nearly 200 units of affordable housing in Montclair and counsels close to 200 households a year on credit repair, budgeting and waiting list placement. You can contact them at info@homecorpnj.org or 973.744.4141.
Montclair Housing Authority
The Montclair Housing Authority directly manages the town’s Section 8 program, the federal voucher system that subsidizes rent for low income tenants. Its waiting list is not always open, so confirm before counting on it.
Essex Community Land Trust
The Essex Community Land Trust takes a different approach again, buying land and keeping homes on it permanently affordable rather than letting them resell at market rate. It also publishes its own list of additional affordable housing providers for households HomeCorp and the Housing Authority cannot immediately place.
Where Do You Start If You Need Help in Montclair?
Call 211, or 877-652-1148, New Jersey’s free 24-hour information line, and a specialist will route you to whichever of the above actually fits your situation, often faster than searching website by website. It is the number most organizations on this list tell people to use when they are not sure where else to call. If your SNAP benefits lapse under the new work requirements, you have 30 days to complete the paperwork to get reinstated before you have to reapply from scratch; NJ 211 or Toni’s Kitchen can walk you through that process.
For a different kind of emergency, such as a missed rent payment, a car repair or a utility shutoff notice, Montclair Helps fills a gap none of the organizations above are built for, paying vendors directly rather than handing over cash.
Food, shelter or a path to something more permanent: Montclair has an answer for each. How many of its neighbors will need one this year is still an open question.
If you want to help before it reaches your neighbor’s door, every organization on this list takes donations and volunteers right now. The smallest programs run almost entirely on people who show up. Mernin sat down with the Pod for a longer conversation on the systemic forces behind these numbers, including her own history in Montclair and what’s changed here over decades. You can read the full story on our site.
Image credit: Toni’s Kitchen
