Keeping the family fed becomes tougher task
Food insecurity hit many before recent shutdowns
“My young ones don’t know where the food is coming from. They’re just like baby birds with their beaks open so food could fall in their mouths. They don’t know if there’s money or not – they still get hungry, so every time I wake up, I keep that in mind.”
SALINAS, Calif. – Three boys sat at a wooden table in the sunlit dining room of their two-bedroom apartment in North Salinas. Two $5 boxes of pepperoni pizzas were stacked on the kitchen table as the brothers devoured slice after slice.
As 3-year-old Jesus, the youngest boy, finished his pizza, a pepperoni fell on the table. He grabbed the pepperoni, held it above his head and dropped it into his open mouth.
Meliton Salvador, the boys’ father, watched as his children enjoyed the meal. A maintenance worker at a Watsonville mushroom company, Meliton is the single source of income for the household: himself, 19-year-old Resi, 11year-old Aldo, 7-year-old Hugo, 3-yearold Jesus, and his pregnant wife, Constanza. Fast food, plus coupons and deals, help keep the family fed.
“Right now my biggest motivation is my kids,” Meliton said in Spanish. “My young ones don’t know where the food is coming from. They’re just like baby birds with their beaks open so food could fall in their mouths. They don’t know if there’s money or not – they still get hungry, so every time I wake up, I keep that in mind.”
A time of uncertainty
While many Americans have worried about the flow and availability of food given the widespread closures of businesses and coronavirus outbreaks during the height of the pandemic, families like the Salvadors worry about affording food at all. Meliton’s company laid off 15 of its 60 employees, he said. The layoffs at Fitz Fresh began shortly after California’s shelter-in-place order took effect. Meliton fears his job could be next.
Roughly 61% of Hispanic adults say they or someone in their households have lost a job or taken a pay cut because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Pew Research survey April 7-12. In contrast, 50% or fewer of black and white adults reported a job loss or pay cut amid the pandemic. Adults without a bachelor’s degree remain more likely to report job or wage losses in their household compared with college graduates, according to the survey.
“My mom and I are concerned about him (Meliton) getting less income mainly because he is the one who contributes to the household expenses and rent,” Resi said. “This summer, I don’t know if I can find a job because of the pandemic, and I don’t want him to worry about me financially. So I’m stressed out.”
Meliton immigrated to Soledad, California, in 1996. His native language, Mixteco, an indigenous language, is not widely spoken in the U.S. The obstacle limited Meliton’s job opportunities in his younger years. His Spanish is still developing. Besides her stepmother and father, Resi and her brother Aldo are the only two people in their household who speak Mixteco.
And they don’t speak it well, Resi said.
Still, Resi regularly translates for her parents.
“It’s kind of a struggle having resources reach out to us since the dominant languages here are English and Spanish,” she said. “With the little Spanish that my parents understand, they kind of understood what COVID-19 was but didn’t fully grasp it. They didn’t know much about COVID-19 until the stay-at-home order. That’s when they started freaking out because they didn’t know what to do.”
Meliton is paid $14 an hour at the mushroom factory and works as many as 10 hours a day. He makes $2 more than California’s minimum wage.
The family’s two-bedroom, twobathroom apartment is $1,300 a month – a good deal in Salinas, one of the nation’s most expensive places to live. Two-bedroom apartments in the area average more than $1,600 a month.
Over 90,000 farmworkers live in the region, earning an average of $17,500 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. After rent is paid, many families have little left to spend on food.
The ripple effect
Many residents already were struggling with food insecurity. With the addition of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis, the threat has grown. According to the California Department of Public Health, roughly 10%, or 40,770 people in Monterey County, where the Salvador family lives, suffered from food insecurity before the pandemic. The department defines food insecurity as the household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.
Twenty percent of children under 18 in Monterey County are food-insecure compared with California’s 19%, or 1,731,270.
When grocery store shelves emptied after the initial news of the coronavirus’ spread, the Salvador family turned to the food they had stocked up from previous deals at local stores. As the crisis continued, the family relied on fast food and nonperishables from past food bank distributions.
“Before the pandemic, we always used to go (to food banks) on Saturdays, Sundays or Fridays,” Resi said.
At Monterey County’s only food bank, Melissa Kendrick, director of the
Food Bank For Monterey County, worries about keeping already struggling residents fed through the long virus outbreak and longer recovery. “We were one of the hungriest counties in the nation going into this pandemic,” she said.
The food bank now serves 240,000 people, or 60,000 families a month.
“In this county, hospitality has been decimated,” Kendrick said. “We are going to be unfortunately in a prolonged, L-shaped recovery in this county, which means we’re looking at 12 to 18 months that we’re going to have to sustain this.”
The reach of the virus has meant not only do more people need food aid, but the food itself has also become more expensive.
“The food staples like pinto beans are up 64%, peanut butter is up 67%, pasta sauce is up 82%,” Kendrick said. “The prices of the items that we purchase have gone through the roof. We’re all seeing this at the supermarket. … We have increased need, increased cost. It’s one of those perfect storms.”
‘There’s a lot of people hurting’
As the liaison for her parents, Resi is involved with the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC. The league aims to improve the lives of Latin Americans living in the U.S. through community-based programs. “If we need food, they will help,” Resi said.
She has contacted Christopher Barrera, president of Salinas LULAC Council 2055, and asked for extra bags of food. “There’s a lot of people hurting,” Barrera said.
With the increased need, the Food Bank for Monterey County is experiencing a food shortage which caused LULAC to use its own resources to supplement the food distribution around the county, Barrera said.
With the help of The Food Bank for Monterey County, Barrera began organizing LULAC food distribution events to supplement existing sites. Since midMarch, LULAC has hosted 18 distributions, handing out between 500 and 1,500 bags that contain peanut butter, rice, beans, pasta, spaghetti paste, produce and waters at each distribution.
For the Salvador family, food services in their community are essential.
“I get sad sometimes,” Meliton said. “But that’s life. There’s people out there who are worse than my family and I, so I try to be thankful for what I do have. … As long as my kids continue to be taken care of, I’ll keep working.”
This work was produced through a collaboration with the Bay Area visual storytelling nonprofit Catchlight. For clarity, this piece refers to the Salvador family members by their first names only, after their first introductions.