Hunger is on rise all over Bay Area
Pandemic lingers: ‘Never had to struggle like this’
Navy veteran Andy Cuevas has always prided himself on being selfsufficient. But when the pandemic hit and the Belmont resident was laid off from work as a veterans’ coordinator at Cañada College while his wife Nadia lost her job at the Gap, they turned to the Second Harvest of Silicon Valley food bank for a weekly grocery box to keep food on the table for their two children.
“We have never had to struggle like this,” said Cuevas, 39, who is now pursuing a degree in social work. “We’ve never had to ask for assistance. But we got really scared; what are we going to do?”
Six months into the pandemic, hunger is more pervasive than ever among households throughout the Bay Area and California.
“I’ve been an antihunger advocate in California for over 20 years, and never seen anything like this,” said Jessica Bartholow, legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Widespread, devastating layoffs have left millions of people scrimping to pay for basic necessities. Desperation is especially high among workers from lowwage service jobs at hotels, restaurants, airports and stores who bore the brunt of layoffs and who lacked financial cushions.
Food insecurity — a government term for lacking access to enough good, healthy and culturally appropriate food — has more than doubled statewide and more than tripled in some Bay Area counties. In San Francisco, for instance, 18.7% of households struggled to get enough to eat in April and May, up from 5.7% in December 2018, according to the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.
“The need is far outstripping what is available,” said Tracey Patterson, senior director for social safety net at Code for America, a nonprofit that has created online support for people applying for CalFresh, the state’s version of food stamps. “The number of people facing instability and job loss is just staggering.”
Applications to CalFresh have surged, but strict federal rules bar many from getting that help. Still, in the ninecounty Bay Area, where about 250,000 people qualified for CalFresh before the pandemic, the number receiving it now is up about 28%, reflecting how many people’s incomes plunged below the federal poverty line.
CalFresh benefits, which come on an electronic card to use at food stores, average just $1.39 per person per meal, so most recipients also rely on food banks and other assistance. “Even if you do qualify, the benefit is inadequate for the area we live in because it’s not adjusted for cost of living,” said Leslie Bacho, CEO of Second Harvest.
Those providing other forms of assistance are also scrambling to meet the challenge. Food banks around the Bay Area now serve about twice as many people as before.
Some are even more besieged. The Redwood Empire Food Bank, which serves five counties from Sonoma to the Oregon border, says the number of people seeking food is up 260% while the number asking for help getting food benefits has tripled, according to spokeswoman Rachelle Mesheau.
“With schools shuttered, layoffs rippling through our communities, and the entire state coming to a standstill, food banks found themselves responding to an unprecedented demand for emergency food,” said Lauren Lathan Reid, a spokeswoman for the California Association of Food Banks. “All the while, they were fielding cancellation of volunteers, rearranging their warehouses to meet social distancing protocols, updating their cleaning protocols, and standing up new distributions.”
Schoollunch programs for lowincome children, which switched to offering grabandgo meals during distance learning, say the need among their students is more acute than ever.
“I know this may be the only meal some families get, so I try to make sure they are extralarge,” said Hope Williams, a family liaison for the San Francisco Unified School District, who works with families on Treasure Island, most of whom live in affordable housing, including many formerly homeless people.
If anything, hunger has risen in recent weeks.
Since late July, unemployment benefits were slashed by $600 a week when a federal supplement ended, so many jobless people saw their incomes plunge. Raging wildfires and choking smoke forced many families to evacuate, and left others temporarily without power, risking spoilage of refrigerated food. The start of the school year left many parents struggling to supervise distance learning, too strapped for time to pick up free meals at their children’s schools. A temporary waiver that allowed people to get CalFresh without a phone interview has expired, adding a choke point.
“Every day we do this work, we know we’re playing a critical role in families’ lives,” said Jennifer LeBarre, executive director of student nutrition services at the San Francisco Unified School District. “For so many families, this is the meal they rely on even in normal times, but COVID has exacerbated the issues. It’s heartbreaking.”
San Francisco provides three free meals a day to needy students. Ordinarily, all must be consumed on campus. But with the pandemic came a federal waiver allowing school districts to package meals for takehome. The city provides five days worth of meals during a Wednesday distribution at school sites. Volunteers do some limited doortodoor deliveries, focusing on the mostvulnerable students.
“There are parts of the city, especially the Tenderloin, where families just don’t feel safe coming out,” LeBarre said. “We’re trying to figure out how to deliver more meals for families who can’t leave or don’t feel safe to leave their homes.”
Government rules curtail who can receive CalFresh and free or lowercost school meals. Incomes must meet the same federal poverty guideline used in all 48 contiguous states. Ironically, in cities such as San Francisco that boosted the minimum wage, that means parents who work fulltime at minimum wage often earn a smidgen too much to qualify for help, LeBarre said — even though their incomes are grossly inadequate for the expensive region.
Government rules also bar undocumented people from receiving CalFresh, leaving 2 million Californians out in the cold. (Food banks and school meal programs do not ask about immigration status.)
To address that safetynet gap, the Legislature last month passed AB826, which would provide $600 in emergency grocery money on prepaid cards.
“Here we are in the middle of a pandemic, and we have just one bill that made it through to passage that offers food assistance,” said Bartholow, the antihunger advocate, who urgently hopes Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign the bill by month’s end. His office said he had not yet taken a position on it.
She and other advocates would love to see renewal of PandemicEBT, a justended program for families of lowincome schoolchildren that provided a debit card for grocery shopping. “California did a lot with PandemicEBT over the summer to prevent hunger,” Bartholow said. About 3.7 million children received more than $1 billion in benefits, according to the state.
There are many other steps the government could take to help, she and other advocates said, including passing the stalemated Heroes Act, which includes several forms of food relief.
“We could use this as a time to reexamine how we administer CalFresh in California,” said Paul Ash, executive director of the San FranciscoMarin Food Bank, which now serves 60,000 households weekly, up from 32,000 prepandemic. “There are all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles CalFresh normally puts people through. A few were removed during this time. We’d like to see those extended, even made permanent.”
Increasing benefits can actually jumpstart the economy, advocates said. “It’s a ripple effect,” said George ManaloLeClair, executive director at California Food Policy Advocates. “When you give households food benefits, they immediately go to work not just helping those eating food but generating economic activity for growers and grocers.”
Advocates are concerned that the crisis will only deepen as the months wear on.
“The need we said was unprecedented back in March and April is now our new normal,” said Cassidie Carmen Bates, policy and advocacy manager at the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, which is now serving 270,000 people a month, up 92,000 from prepandemic. “We anticipate continuing to serve that really high level of need, not just for the next few months, but for the next few years.”
The winter months bring higher heating bills and the expiration of some protections for renters.
“We worry about what January will look like as eviction moratoriums go away, as people’s rent comes due,” said Second Harvest’s Bacho. “We want to be ready to respond to any big spike in need.”
Many folks who rely on benefits try to express their appreciation by volunteering.
San Francisco resident Patricia Minor, 72, gets a weekly food box that helps her feed the grandchildren she often watches.
“It’s a blessing not to have to buy certain things,” she said. “I volunteered at the food bank for a long time. They help me out and then I’m giving back to the community.”
Cuevas, the Belmont resident, feels lucky that Second Harvest was available and thankful that he could reciprocate by volunteering during the weekly distributions to help recipients sign in.
“It makes me feel so much better, not just receiving, but contributing,” he said. “One friendly face makes a big difference.”