Ahead of Thanksgiving, OC Food Bank Director Mark Lowry found himself having to tell local pantry operators requesting food supplies, a phrase he hasn’t uttered since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic:
“I’m sorry but I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“I’ve had to dust off that unfortunate phrase,” Lowry said in a phone interview last week. “The thing that I hate to say the most, no.”
Lowry is one of several food bank and pantry leaders that was thrown to the frontlines more than four years ago to help families put food on the table week after week amid layoffs sparked by COVID-19 government mandated shutdowns.
The need for food in the county that skyrocketed back in 2020 has still not dropped down to pre-pandemic levels and for a while now food bank leaders have said it’s unclear when it will.
Or if it will.
Now, Lowry and others like Second Harvest Food Bank of OC CEO Claudia Bonilla Keller worry that the need is quietly climbing back up to what it was in the onset of the pandemic.
But this time they’re navigating a hunger landscape without the influx of government assistance and private donations that bolstered their efforts early in the pandemic.
And they’re concerned hunger is increasing at a rate faster than they can keep up with.
“We know that food insecurity is growing in Orange County at a faster rate than the state of California and the nation,” Keller said in a phone interview last week. “We have a particularly intractable problem here in Orange County that most people are not aware of.”
People looking to donate to or volunteer with local organizations like Second Harvest Food Bank or the OC Food Bank can do so at the links provided here.
Lowry said that what was once considered the county’s emergency food assistance system has transformed to a system that is trying to meet chronic needs of struggling residents.
“There are people in low paying jobs. There are seniors on fixed incomes. There are people with a disability. There are people who are unlikely to have a substantial change in their household income or situation anytime in the foreseeable future,” he said.
“The reality is that’s primarily who we’re serving.”
Keller said Second Harvest served over half a million people in October – the most since the height of the pandemic.
“We expected it to be high. We were surprised that it was that high, and we anticipate that it will be that high in November,” Keller said, adding that while the need for food is always high in the winter months, October was a shock.
She attributes the dramatic increase to “stubborn food inflation” and the high costs of fuel and housing to the increasing food insecurity dilemma.
The increase comes after an abrupt end last year to increased public COVID-19 food assistance and other benefits that helped millions of Californians buy food combined with high inflation costs that sparked another challenge:
A food cliff.
[Read: The 2023 Food Cliff: Orange County Continues Confronting High Food Demand]
Keller said they are trying to get the basics to people like eggs, milk, produce and protein, but they run out of supplies.
“Even though we’re getting constant deliveries of those and we’re purchasing that food, there simply isn’t enough to go around,” she said. “It’s really important that we get out what we can to keep families nourished.”
Lowry says food distributions like the ones happening for Thanksgiving are key to that mission and critical to helping struggling families have a positive experience this holiday.
[Read: Orange County Gears up to Provide Thanksgiving Dinners for Struggling Residents]
‘A Hidden Crisis’
As the need for food climbs, government assistance and private donations are dwindling, food bank leaders say.
They also say hunger is an issue that is seemingly becoming invisible to many people.
“We’re no longer the lead story in the nightly news,” Lowry said.
He said food donations are down 35% from what they were last year for his food bank and while many assumed the need for food would drop off after the pandemic, that wasn’t the case.
“There’s a gap in resources that neither the food banks or our partners have adequate resources to meet the needs today, and we continue to need that private and public support to address food insecurity in Orange County,” Lowry said, adding the state’s budget deficit will worsen the situation.
Keller agreed, adding that food insecure people are not as visible as homeless people and the emergency food system is overwhelmed.
“The crisis that Mark is alluding to has now become a hidden crisis.” she said. “The emergency food system is no longer an emergency anymore. It is entrenched and people are coming to food pantries on a regular basis and that is not sustainable.”
A Long Term Battle to End Hunger
To address the need, food bank and pantry leaders, government officials, donors and nonprofits are getting together to map out how best to tackle hunger long term and improve the efficiency of the current food assistance system in place.
In June, leaders with the OC Hunger Alliance held a meeting to share the results of an assessment of the top challenges for over 300,000 OC residents who don’t have regular access to nutritious and healthy food and the hundreds of food providers and nonprofits trying to help feed them.
[Read: Tearing Down the Barriers to Food Access in Orange County]
Those challenges include undocumented residents not being able to get public food benefits, residents needing transportation to get to food distributions, funding and storage space shortages – along with a lack of culturally sensitive food and protein available at pantries.
Mike Learakos, one of the leaders with OC Hunger Alliance, said in a phone interview last week that since the June meeting, the alliance has focused on a plan to help nonprofits buy good food at low prices, improving data collection on hunger and giving people food they want.
“On December 4, we’re ready to roll out an Enhanced Procurement Program to every nonprofit agency in Orange County. It gives them access to a national group purchasing organization and the distribution arm that will allow these nonprofit agencies to buy products,” he said.
Hunger in OC
According to OC’s two food banks, the Second Harvest and the OC Food Bank each feed on average over 400,000 residents a month so far this year.
Prior to the pandemic in 2019, Second Harvest fed on average 249,000 residents a month.
That same year, the OC Food Bank fed on average 220,244 residents a month.
The food insecurity rate in OC is projected to be close to 13.7% as compared to 8.5% in 2018, according to the OC Hunger Alliance.
For food assistance options, visit 211 OC.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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