Houston struggles to meet soaring need for food aid
HOUSTON — In car lines that can stretch half a mile, workers who lost jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic and other needy people receive staggering amounts of food distributed by the Houston Food Bank. On some days, the hundreds of sites supplied by the country’s largest food bank collectively get 1 million pounds.
Among the ranks of recipients is unemployed construction worker Herman Henton, whose wife is a home improvement store worker and now the sole breadwinner for their family of five. They tried to get food stamps but were told they qualified for only $ 25 of federal food assistance monthly.
“As a man, as a father, as a provider I felt at a low point,” Henton said as he waited in his car near West Houston Assistance Ministries, which gets food from the Houston Food Bank for its care packages. “In this type of situation there’s nothing you can really do.”
Distributions by the Houston Food Bank now average about 800,000 pounds daily after reaching the unprecedented 1 million pound mark for the first time in the spring, a level that the organization still delivers periodically.
Before the coronavirus struck, the group’s average daily distribution was 450,000 pounds, said Houston Food Bank President Brian Greene. Then workers in Houston and millions around the country were suddenly thrown out of work and forced to rely on the handouts.
“It had that feeling of a disaster, like the hurricanes in the Gulf,” Greene said. “It was shocking how the lines exploded so quickly.”
Almost overnight, one of America’s most ethnically and racially diverse cities became a symbol of a desperate need as the food bank scrambled to take in enough milk, bread, vegetables and meat from multiple sources to feed the hungry.
Many people in Houston and around the U. S. live paycheck to paycheck and were caught off guard by the economic fallout from the coronavirus that initially cost the nation 22 million jobs, with 10.7 million that haven’t come back.
Nationwide, the charitable food distribution “surge has stayed at a surge level,” said Katie Fitzgerald, executive vice president of Feeding America, a national network of 200 food banks.
Her group boosted the amount of food it distributes to 2 billion pounds from April through June, up from 1.3 billion pounds during the January March period.