Through the end of May, the Community Assistance Center has already helped provide food assistance and eviction avoidance to 4,725 people, the organization’s CEO told the Sandy Springs City Council.
After serving 6,908 clients in 2022, the organization is expecting to to surpass that figure, CEO and Executive Director Francis Horton told the council at its June 20 meeting.
Through its financial assistance, the CAC helped 636 families avoid evictions in 2022. This year, the CAC already has prevented 305 evictions, he said.
But the number of evictions prevented could have been 900 in 2022 if they had more resources, Horton said.
“You can see the trajectory is the same for our folks visiting our food pantries,” he said.
In 2022, CAC helped 5,300 people with food assistance, supplying 658,886 pounds of food valued at $1.1 million. In the first five months of this year, 3,663 people have been helped with 320,381 pounds of food distributed valued at $544,648.
Horton said 77 percent of the organization’s clients are Sandy Springs residents.
“People with incomes above poverty are coming to see us more and more people that never have needed assistance before are coming to get assistance,” he said.
An example was a single mother of three who came to CAC having never sought assistance anywhere else. She works the same 40-hour-a-week job as she was four years ago, driving the same car, and living in the same two-bedroom apartment with her children attending the same school.
“She made it through COVID. Then every price in life went up. She could no longer pay the bills. She had to come to us for help,” Horton said.
More families find themselves having to decide “Do I buy food or do I pay rent?” he said. CAC tries to help by providing some financial assistance with rent and utilities.
He said they know they succeed because 180 days after providing assistance, they check in with the client. By then, 93 percent of the clients had stabilized their housing situation and 57 percent had completely resolved their crisis.
Horton said they’ve studied the data and the needs are not going away. The number of clients visiting the CAC food pantries has risen 57 percent over the last year. Across the board, requests for CAC services are up 47 percent over 2022, and he said their resources are not keeping up.
Mayor Rusty Paul said the city relies heavily on CAC to provide services to the community. With the structure of government, he said cities don’t normally provide these services, which are the responsibility of the county.
“But we’ve invested in CAC for a long time, and we’ll continue to do that because you do provide excellent service and you do provide hope and opportunity for the people in our community who really need it,” he said.
CAC has locations in north and south Sandy Springs as well as Dunwoody.
Six different levels of adult education classes are also provided, with English as a Second Language, computer, and financial management classes as CAC tries to help its clients set financial goals.
In 2022, the nonprofit kicked off its Career Center. They use volunteer career advocates who act as coaches to walk clients through the process from job seekers to being on a career path. The first career fair with the city was held in March 2022, with a second planned for this September.
Kids who get free lunches at school are getting them from the CAC this summer. They’ll provide backpacks with school supplies for the next school year, coats for kids, and then food boxes around Thanksgiving for families. The ‘Adopt a Family’ program around Christmas had 1,600 kids adopted last year who received gifts.
Horton said some of the city council members may not know about the volunteer income tax assistance program. The volunteer program is an IRS program that’s administered by the United Way, with CAC as an implementing partner.
“This year, they did 400 tax returns. Those 400 tax returns put more than $700,000 back into clients’ homes through tax refunds and tax credits,” he said.
Credit: Rough Draft Atlanta
Credit: Rough Draft Atlanta
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