The lines of cars that stretched around many metro Atlanta food pantries last year may not be reappearing this holiday season, but local anti-hunger groups say they’re still seeing elevated demand as the pandemic continues.
Even as Georgians return to the workforce, it’s taking some families months or longer to catch up on their finances. Many continue to visit food pantries to make ends meet as they pay back rent and settle debts incurred during COVID-induced slowdowns, according to leaders of local food charities.
“In our view, we’re not really out of the woods,” Kyle Waide, president and CEO of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said in an interview this week. “For a family that got really impacted by this pandemic… it’s not a light switch that flips and now they’re back on solid ground again.”
Danah Craft, executive director of the Georgia Food Bank Association, said demand for emergency food assistance last month was still 30% above pre-pandemic levels statewide.
The Atlanta Community Food Bank, which collects and distributes provisions to some 700 food pantries, community kitchens and other nonprofits across the region, was moving about 6 million pounds of food a month before the pandemic. By June 2020, that number had surged to 10 million pounds.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
The situation has since improved. Demand dropped over the summer and in recent months has stayed stable at about 8 million pounds a month.
Waide attributes that decline to factors like the economic recovery — the state’s unemployment rate sunk from 12.5% in April 2020 to an all-time low of 2.8% last month — and various stimulus programs. One of the most crucial, he said, was the child tax credit, which for the last six months has helped the parents of roughly 2 million Georgia children pay bills and buy groceries.
But the tax credits are set to expire soon as congressional Democrats deadlock over the party’s social spending package amid GOP opposition. That and factors like the ending of the federal eviction moratorium, the ascendant omicron variant and inflation have the food bank preparing for another surge in need.
“The thing we’ve learned over the last 20 months is that it’s very hard to predict what the next phase is going to look like,” Waide said.
Nationwide, food pantries big and small are contending with supply chain issues, fewer volunteers and less direct government support. High gas prices mean both the cost of food and transporting it have increased.
About 6.8% of Georgia households reported in early December that they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat, according to a recent Census Bureau survey. The number was even higher, 10.4%, for households with children.
To help meet the need, Gov. Brian Kemp announced earlier this week that he plans to prioritize an existing Department of Agriculture program in his upcoming budget. Food pantries would apply for grants that could be used to purchase surplus fruit, vegetables and meats directly from Georgia farmers at a discount.
At an event outside of the Atlanta Community Food Bank on Monday, the Republican said the plan would “quite literally support thousands of families here in the Peach State. Both those striving to put healthy food on the table and the farm families who supply produce and protein to kitchen tables.”
Such a program could aid organizations like Feeding GA Families. The College Park-based nonprofit forged new relationships with churches and charitable groups during COVID-19 to serve a broader swath of the state.
“We saw that there were areas that weren’t getting as much assistance as they needed,” said chief financial officer Alicia Rivera. Because some pantries closed due to the pandemic, there were many people who “weren’t able to go to their regular pantries. So we looked for partnerships in those areas to be able to serve them.”
The organization served 80,000 people in 2019. This year, Rivera said, that number was closer to 200,000.
COVID prompted some working families to seek assistance for the first time, according to Rivera. Some were furloughed or saw their hours cut back. Others were hit with unexpected expenses, like a broken-down car or a large medical bill, that caused them to fall behind.
Many customers, Rivera said, are “kind of playing that juggling game” with their bills.
Meanwhile, more regular customers on government assistance visited less due to enhanced public benefits.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
The pandemic forced Feeding GA Families to change the way it distributes its food. Ditto for the Southwest Ecumenical Emergency Assistance Center in West End, which provides food, clothing and household items to the needy.
Instead of families visiting headquarters to do their own shopping, volunteers now deliver food to clients’ homes. Executive Director Ernesta Ingram said the organization also began working with the city of Atlanta during the pandemic, which connected them with new people needing assistance, many of them immigrants.
“We have noticed that they are coming to us with more and more families who did consider themselves to be middle class at some point who now are struggling,” she said.
The center now serves about 30% more people than it did from before the pandemic, Ingram estimates, roughly 2,300 families and 12,000 children per month. That level has largely held steady since last year.
Meeting that demand with healthy food options has at times been a struggle. The center works with grocery store chains like Kroger, Publix and Whole Foods for some provisions. But early in the pandemic, as store shelves emptied, that limited the options being donated to the food pantry. Lately there’s been an overage, she said, but the center has seen an increase in requests for things like hygiene items and school supplies, not to mention toys for the holidays.
Waide said policymakers must be mindful that any new disruptions to the economy could send some vulnerable families back into the red.
“We’ve got to keep the foot on the gas with this recovery for it to really be resilient and sustainable,” he said.
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