The country with the largest economy and most billionaires in the world is now seeing its poorest citizens lined up for miles in their cars, waiting patiently for food. For some the wait turns out to be a waste of time, and they are turned away empty-handed. Food banks and food pantries around the United States are beginning to run out of food to distribute, buckling under the strain of massive demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shuttering of the national economy.
The New York Times revealed the remarkable increases in need—and decreasing resources—that are popping up across the country.
In Omaha, a food pantry that typically serves as few as 100 people saw 900 show up on a single day. In Jonesboro, Ark., after a powerful tornado struck, a food bank received less than half the donations it expected because nervous families held on to what they had. And in Washington State and Louisiana, the National Guard has been called in to help pack food boxes and ensure that the distributions run smoothly.
Demand for food assistance is rising at an extraordinary rate, just as the nation’s food banks are being struck by shortages of both donated food and volunteer workers.
The video clip below shows a miles-long chain of vehicles outside the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.
An even longer line emerged in San Antonio this week, where thousands of people in cars waited for hours to get food.
According to the Times, Feeding America, the largest association of food banks nationwide, is projecting a $1.4 billion shortfall over the next six months. Organizations simply cannot keep up with the demand for food, nor could they be expected to, under the circumstances. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has advised he will donate $100 million to the network, but even this sum will not be enough to satisfy the demand; that remarkable sum is just one-fourteenth of that six-month projection.
Many people in the videos above have never before gone to a food bank, but the economic conditions now leave them little choice. According to a report in The Guardian earlier this week, about one in three people seeking emergency food relief in this country had never done so before. The Times profiled Tini Mason and his partner, Crystal Stewart, both of whom lost their respective service industry jobs as a cook and hotel worker. Mason hopes that if he does not have to worry about food, he may be able to pay the rent and make his car payment. He also recognized that even car ownership is a privilege.
Mr. Mason described the sight of mile after mile of drivers seeking food as “an eye-opener, mind-blowing, an experience I will never forget.” He and Ms. Stewart said they honked their horn as a gesture of appreciation for volunteers, then drove home and shared eggs and fruit with neighbors who do not own cars.
Prior to this crisis, there was no shortage of articles warning how millions of Americans lacked the funds to cover a $500 emergency. For many who could handle such an expense, and even those who just hoped they would never have to, those articles seemed like academic exercises, abstract and impersonal, even while vaguely alarming. Now we are seeing the reality of exactly what that lack of a financial cushion really means.
As an added burden, many low-income families finding themselves newly unemployed have children they must care for as well. Before the pandemic, their kids were guaranteed five to ten meals a week at school. But schools are now closed across the country. None of these people have yet received any assistance from the CARES Act stimulus package passed last month by Congress, and there is no clear guidance from the government when they will receive it. Aside from the those $1,200 checks which may (someday) make their way to the nation’s poorest, the “stimulus” relief bill only provides for increased commodity donations by the Department of Agriculture. But the lassitude and incompetence of this administration suggests even that relief will be too little, too late.
Food banks such as the one in Duquesne rely heavily on volunteers, but those volunteers are often retirees—the same people most susceptible to and prone to serious complications from the COVID-19 virus. In a populace that is by now essentially locked down, volunteers are running short.
Yet as the Times notes, the most serious obstacle these organizations face is that the organizations that normal supply them are either shut down themselves or have little food to spare.
Perhaps more alarmingly, many of the organizations that typically donate large volumes of food have themselves shut down. Restaurants, hotels and casinos have closed across the country. And grocery stores, which ordinarily share unsold inventory that is approaching its best-by date, have less to donate because their worried customers have been stripping so many shelves bare.
As a result, according to the Times, food banks are forced to buy what they would normally receive by donation, in some cases increasing their expenditures as much as tenfold. The Three Square Food Bank in Clark County, Nevada, profiled in the Times article, is now spending $300,000-400,000 per week, as the donated food it used to receive from casinos has dwindled. According to their chief operating officer, Larry Scott, these outlays are going to have to continue for the foreseeable future, because, not surprisingly, “Hungry people are hungry each and every day.”
But these are food banks, not Wall Street banks. They don’t have that kind of capital and this situation is unsustainable. Food banks supply what we know as “food pantries” and also provide direct assistance. They are distinct from the SNAP program (formerly known as “food stamps”), which nearly 40 million Americans rely on. According to the Times, there are nine SNAP recipients for every food bank recipient, but so many people have now applied for SNAP that the program cannot begin to process the number of applications—estimated at 10 million new applicants as of this writing—in time. Meanwhile, the Donald Trump administration instituted a rule that kicked hundreds of thousands of people off SNAP in January, all but guaranteeing more people flocking to the food banks.
The Times interviewed Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; she described the crisis as unprecedented in history. “People love the phrase ‘the perfect storm,’” she says, “but nothing is built for this.”
The Guardian contacted nine food bank and pantry facilities for its investigation. All of them reported drastic increases in demand over the past month:
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In Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts’ largest campus, the pantry distributed 849% more food in March compared with the previous year. The second-largest increase in western Massachusetts was 748% at the Pittsfield Salvation Army pantry.
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The Grace Klein community food pantry in Jefferson County, which has the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Alabama, provided 5,076 individuals with food boxes last week—a 90% increase on the previous week.
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In southern Arizona, demand has doubled, with pantries supplying groceries to 4,000 households every day—double the number supplied in March 2019. “We saw an increase during the federal government shutdown but nothing as rapid, massive or overwhelming as this,” said Michael McDonald, CEO of the Community Food Bank of South Arizona.
The Feeding America site provides a link to access Food Banks in your area and also a means to donate, either cash or food. Their website states that food banks “accept dry and canned food donations. What does that mean? Basically, any food that is ‘shelf-stable’ or nonperishable – you can keep it in your pantry and it won’t go bad.”
Alternatively, you can contact your congressperson and demand that the nation’s food banks be fully funded for the duration of this crisis.