http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-valecon28-2008jul28,0,42513.story
Demand soars as donations decline at L.A.-area food banks
Job losses have hit the San Fernando Valley particularly hard as the
economic downturn spreads beyond the poor and begins to affect middle-
and upper-class families.
By Jennifer Oldham
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2008
Food pantry operators throughout the Los Angeles region report that
demand for free groceries has surged to the highest level in recent
memory this summer as the sagging economy has hit not only the poor, but
also middle- and upper-class families.
"This is probably the most people we've ever seen use emergency food
assistance," said Darren Hoffman, communications director for the
35-year-old Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. "We're seeing people who
were making $70,000 a year coming into a food bank for the first time. .
. . They've used their retirement to pay their mortgage, and gone
through their savings."
The organization, which distributes groceries to about 670,000 people
each year through a network of more than 900 religious entities and
nonprofits, watched demand increase by 80% this spring.
Steep job losses in the banking and entertainment industries, on top of
the housing downturn, are reverberating particularly hard through the
San Fernando Valley, leading to less work for janitors, waiters and
others. The Valley has lost thousands of jobs in financial services,
largely due to the failure last fall of Calabasas-based Countrywide
Financial Corp. -- the nation's largest mortgage lender -- which laid
off more than 20% of its workforce.
"We're seeing an increase in people who never would have asked for help
in the past," said Joan Mithers, a director at SOVA Jewish Family
Service of Los Angeles, which operates three food pantries including its
headquarters in Van Nuys. The agency served 5,605 people in June, up 28%
from a similar period in 2007 and 46% over June 2006.
One recent day, Teresita Guzman was among those standing in long lines
to receive food, clothing and other assistance at the northeast Valley
headquarters of Meet Each Need With Dignity, or MEND.
Her eyes cast downward, Guzman tugged at her worn black T-shirt and
recounted how her three teenage sons decided to hold off eating the corn
flakes she brought home from a food pantry until she could afford to buy
milk.
"I told them to wait until their dad gets paid," the 39-year-old Pacoima
resident said through an interpreter. With construction work
increasingly hard to find, the family can't depend on regular paychecks.
The one-two punch of a declining income of about $1,300 a month -- with
half going to rent -- and higher gas and food prices forced Guzman for
the first time this spring to visit MEND to pick up food for her family.
The Valley's largest charitable group aiding the poor, MEND serves about
46,200 people a month and has seen demand jump about 26% so far this year.
"There's a perception that the Valley is middle class and one of the
richer parts of L.A.," said Marianne Haver Hill, MEND's executive
director. "The poverty is very much hidden here."
But recent statistics underscore the fact that times are tough for
people of all income levels who call the 225-square-mile Valley area
home. Job losses in the Valley's signature industries, such as financial
services and entertainment, pushed unemployment claims in May to a
four-year high, said Dan Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley
Economic Research Center at Cal State Northridge.
Local food pantry operators said some clients had exhausted savings and
retirement funds and had their vehicles repossessed before they came for
free food.
Yet as demand is climbing, food donations to charities throughout
Southern California are at record lows, leading some organizations to
face a tough choice: Should they feed each family less in order to serve
more people?
"We're able to provide less food for the money we have," said Cambria
Smith, president of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, a
network of 18 pantries that primarily serves people living in the west
Valley.
Food pantry administrators said they tend to give cereal and other
scarce items to families first, in some cases leaving single clients
without certain goods. They also refer clients to agencies in
surrounding communities that haven't been hit as hard, and limit free
grocery visits to once a month.
The federal government exacerbated food pantry shortages when it slashed
two-thirds of the surplus food it donated to charities earlier this
decade. In 2002, 42 million pounds of groceries were donated to the Los
Angeles Regional Food Bank, and 60% of that came from the Department of
Agriculture; in 2007, the organization received 35 million pounds of
food, and the government's share of the donations dropped to 25%, said
Hoffman, the agency's spokesman.
Supermarkets have also decreased donations by trimming the amount of
food sold close to its expiration date and selling dented goods to
discount outlets.
With fewer groceries available, many charities are scrambling to raise
money to buy staples such as powdered milk. And prices for those staples
are at 18-year highs.
At MEND, food bank director Gina Mirabella said her volunteers spend
hours some days dialing grocers and food manufacturers requesting
donations. She said she's even gone so far as to phone the toll-free
number on cereal boxes and Canadian outlets asking for donations from
their Los Angeles warehouses.
"I try to keep up by covering more ground, covering more stores,
covering more merchants, covering more companies," said Mirabella, who
said the workload is the highest it's been in her 20 years at MEND. "We
come up short mostly on cereals and soups and canned meats."
In search of eggs, milk and other staples to feed her husband and three
children, Maria Oliveros visited her neighborhood church in Pacoima
recently, only to find that they were out of food. Sitting in a dirt
backyard surrounded by a camper covered by a plastic tarp, a camper
shell and several rusted storage sheds, Oliveros said two-thirds of her
husband's paycheck pays for two rooms the family rents in a nearby bungalow.
What's left is barely enough to pay for gas, school uniforms and other
necessities, she said, forcing her to seek free food for her family
several times a week.
"Last year I would go to the church every once in a while, but now I go
every Monday and Tuesday," Oliveros said through an interpreter. "It's
very hard right now."
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
