Food insecurity expands in Asheville area
Posted 04/27/11
view article on Citizen Times website
SHEVILLE — Pat LaPier keeps the safety of her grandbabies in mind whenever she decides how to spend her limited resources.
It’s a juggling act for LaPier, who faces mounting medical bills from two blown
knees and lives on a fixed income. At times she may not be able to pay the full amount of a utility bill. Maybe she won’t get a full tank of gas. At least she owns her home outright.
But putting food on the table for her husband, who is disabled, and for her son
and his three kids, is a priority.
“There isn’t really room for extras,” she said. “If there are other things that will have to step back because I want to make sure the kids are fed and that there’s heat in the house — that comes before anything else.”
According to a troubling new study, LaPier is part of a growing number of people in
Western North Carolina who face food insecurity. The term has replaced “hunger”
when advocates talk about people who often don’t know where their next meal is
coming from, if it comes at all, whether because of poverty or other obstacles.
Although Buncombe County typically gets the lion’s share of attention, the study
offers a stark snapshot of hunger in Western North Carolina.
Overall, one in six residents of WNC faces food insecurity, according to the Map the Meal Gap 2011 study. In some WNC counties, the rate is as high as one in four.
The report was commissioned by Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic
hunger-relief organization.
At the same time, food pantries throughout the region report an ever-growing number
of clients, many struggling to move past the shame they feel about asking for help.
The face of hunger, too, is changing.
Climbing gas and food prices, coupled with stagnant wages and high unemployment,
have contributed to a troubling scenario for many working families.
One in three families in North Carolina can be described as the working poor, the
report says, families who earn “too much” to qualify for federal food aid but not
enough to provide food for every meal.
“Everything is so expensive. Prices are rising, but salaries are not,” said Silvia
Peterson, executive director at Centro Latino in Spruce Pine, which operates a
food pantry open to all residents of Mitchell County.
Many people, she said, “still have a steady job but not as many hours as they used to. That can make a huge difference when you have to pay all the bills that don’t change, but you are not getting the same income you were getting a couple of weeks ago.”
About 10 percent of new clients at El Centro can be described as the working
poor. That’s why Peterson gets frustrated when critics say people who visit pantries just want something for nothing, or that they should get a job.
“It takes a lot of courage to walk through the door and pick up food,” she said. “If you had to step into their shoes, would you walk into that place and say to somebody you don’t know, ‘I don’t have enough food to feed my family?’ That’s pretty difficult.
“So when somebody walks in here, I believe that there’s a need.
“There are people that just don’t make enough money to make but only one meal
a day,” she said.
Although the details contained in the study are disturbing, the information helps
MANNA FoodBank know where to target its outreach efforts, from fundraising to
capacity building at local agencies, to advocacy and signing up qualifying families
for Food Nutrition Services benefits, formerly called food stamps.
“It seems like we were already on the edge,” said Cynthia Threlkeld, MANNA
FoodBank’s new executive director. “There really is a problem in the community, and
we need to find a way to address it. The whole issue of donor fatigue and
compassion fatigue — that’s very real, but it doesn’t mean that the needs aren’t
continuing to creep up.”
The study also gives a snapshot of some counties that are experiencing high rates of food insecurity, including nearly one in four residents in Graham County and almost one in five in McDowell. The need is overwhelming local pantries, many of which are reporting drops in donations.
In Buncombe County, the food insecurity rate is about one in six residents.
“There are children that honestly can’t live with the confidence that they are going to be able to have something to eat when they are hungry,” Threlkeld said.
The community needs to embrace a “sense of cosmic humility,” a deeper sense of
compassion, she said, before it can respond appropriately to this pervasive
social problem.
The warmer weather hasn’t brought relief at Southern Reconciliation Ministries in
Burnsville. The nonprofit’s food pantry usually sees a drop in people needing
assistance this time of year, once Yancey County families aren’t spending as much
money on heating their homes.
“That’s not happening yet this year,” said director John Miller. “That’s kind of
unnerving, because usually at this point, we drop off pretty dramatically.”
Southern Reconciliation Ministries is one of the largest social services agencies in Yancey County, serving an average of 300 families a month in a county with an
unemployment rate of 12.8 percent. It distributes nearly 8,000 pounds of food a
month, and it never seems to be quite enough to reach everyone who needs help.
Nearly one in five Yancey County residents — an estimated 3,500 out of 18,000 —
face food insecurity. Of those, 27 percent are the working poor.
Jobless rates in individual WNC counties may slowly be dropping, but the number of
people who need food aid is not.
Participation for the food and assistance program at the McDowell County Council on
Human Services has “skyrocketed,” with 4,000 cases in 2010, up from 1,700 in
2008, according to director Phillip Hardin. The county’s jobless rate was 12.5 percent in February.
In an effort to get needy families as much help as possible, MANNA is pushing food
pantries to make sure all their eligible clients sign up for available government
benefits.
To qualify, a North Carolina family usually need to be earning less than 200 percent of the poverty level. That comes to about $22,350 for a family of four, which is higher than the national average, thanks to a change the state legislature approved in July.
But that safety net doesn’t catch everyone.
“There are a lot of working poor families out there,” Hardin said. It’s hard on the
staff “to tell somebody who is really trying — and they are doing all they can — that they aren’t eligible for benefits or they are only eligible for very small amount of benefits. That’s not putting food on their table.”
Hardin sees a lot of food insecurity among seniors, particularly because they live on fixed incomes.
Although many seniors likely do qualify for benefits, it is meeting resistance because of pride or because seniors feel the benefits are too small to be worth the effort and embarrassment. The average benefit for seniors in McDowell is $16 a month.
But small amounts can make a difference. Survey respondents in the study reported
an additional $56 a month could help people meet their food needs. The average
cost of a meal in McDowell is $2.42.
In Buncombe, the average cost of a meal, based on the cost of food in the county, is $2.45.
Many people believe the problem of people going hungry is more prevalent in other countries, Peterson said.
“But there are a lot of hungry people in this country, in these counties,” she said. “Nobody’s exempt. Many people think this is not going to touch me, I will never be hungry. That’s not true.”
Food box for a family of four
Food assistance agencies try to include breakfast and dinner items in each food box, which should contain enough food for about a week. A typical box for a family of four at Southern Reconciliation Ministries in Burnsville includes: four meat items, four juice items, eight vegetable items, five fruit items, one pasta item, two pasta/tomato sauce items, five soup items, three mac & cheese items, four canned beans items, two rice and dry beans items, one jar of peanut butter, two snack items, one box of cereal and six additional items. To help • Centro Latino in Spruce Pine operates an emergency food pantry as well as the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program for qualifying families in Mitchell County. To volunteer or donate, call 765-9980. The center is at 31 Cross St. in Spruce Pine. • Southern Reconciliation Ministries in Burnsville operates an emergency food pantry as well as the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program for qualifying families in Yancey County. To volunteer or donate, call 682-7251. Visit www.southern reconciliationministries.org. The pantry is at 20 Academy St., Burnsville. • The Family Resource Center at Emma provides emergency assistance, including access to a food pantry, to families in the Emma community. It is on the campus of Emma Elementary School, 37 Brickyard Road. To help or donate, call 259-9717. For a complete listing of agencies providing emergency food assistance, visit MANNA FoodBank’s website at http://mannafoodbank.org.
