It has been a rough stretch for people such as Vladymir, who works in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and whose wife just had a baby.
"I had to try to swallow my pride a little bit and try to get out here. This is not something I usually think I would do," he said.
Vladymir is one of the few hundred government employees who went to the emergency market set up at Front and Tasker streets. With the cars zipping on I-95 above, people lined up in the parking lot below with bags and boxes to fill up.
Those who came to pick up some groceries expressed their gratitude to the volunteers, but a few said the shutdown can't end soon enough.
"It's been a rough month, and it's just getting rougher," said Scott. His wife is also a government employee, so no income at all means doing whatever they can to make ends meet, even if it means standing out in the cold for bags of food.
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"This is the first time we're hitting one of these, and we're gonna keep hitting them every week," he said. "We have two teenagers at home, older teenagers — college and a high school senior. So, they're like food vacuums."
Robert, whose fiance works for the IRS, says what these federal workers really need is a paycheck as the bills pile up.
"Tomatoes ain't gonna pay for the gas bill. Tomatoes ain't gonna pay for the kid's tuition to college," he said. "Starting to get really tight. We had to get to defer things to the back end, like car payments. We’ve already talked to the gas company, the electric company. We still have to talk to the cable company."
The emergency markets will take place every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. until two weeks after the government shutdown ends.