LAKE COUNTY >> The poverty rate in Lake County is currently at a disturbingly high 21.5 percent, according to Lou Denny, North Coast Opportunities (NCO) Food Pantry Assistant and Hunger Task Force Chairman. Though this is down from 25 percent from 2009-2013, it’s still a worrying number. The local unemployment rate compounds the problem.
With data suggests that many people in the county have a hard time putting enough food on the table for their families. Add in the rising cost of groceries and the situation seems as if it could be edging on impossible. Thankfully the county has food pantries, meals on wheels programs and senior centers that serve the hungry. But when the price of food goes up, those places can be affected like everyone else.
“As food costs continue to rise, the families and individuals, including the homeless, come to our pantry for food,” Denny said. The pantry is continuously responsible for helping to feed an increasing number of mouths.
The situation for Senior Centers in Lake County varies, but some are seeing similar issues. “Our US Food bill seems to be up $400 a month in the last six months,” said Lori Tourville, the director of the Middletown Senior Center. US Food is just one of the many organizations where they purchase groceries. And not only have food costs risen, the amount of people turning to the center for help has gone up as well. According to Tourville, they’ve seen a considerable increase in individuals coming to the center.
Due to increasing costs and people to provide for, the center relies on their grants, donations and fundraisers, much like NCO. Local businesses step in to provide some much needed food. “We do get local donations from Hardester’s Market, which is very helpful,” Tourville said. “They give us all their day old everything. From canned food to soups to cheese to bread, even milk sometimes.” Whatever food the center doesn’t use in meal preparation, they put out on a table for people to pick from. “And so the seniors are really benefitting from that. They’re on a tight budget so when the costs go up, they don’t get raises or anything or have extra money.”
Local organizations have also been generous enough to prove food for the center. “Calpine bought some steers and hogs and turkeys at the fair and donated the meat to five senior centers in Lake County,” Tourville said. “Everything from hamburgers to ham. So we were able to use that in our lunches too.”
But the pressure to raise funds and serve the population is always there.
When the food pantry began in August of 2012, NCO served only 50 to 75 households a week, but that number has increased significantly in just two and a half years. “Every week we are doing an excess of 150 households a week,” Denny said. People show up at 6:30 a.m. to ensure they receive their boxes of food from the pantry. As the years go on, more and more people sign up to receive a box twice a month. “We had another 12 to 15 new enrollees in the program and that’s consistent every month.”
Though this does affect the pantry, they’re fortunate enough to have donors willing to cut them deals and help out with the funding. “We have grants that cover it, and also donations,” explained Tammy Alakszay, NCO program coordinator. “We have different programs that all contribute to the cost of the food.”
There are also many other factors that help ease NCO’s costs. Various organizations throughout the area have set up food collection barrels, the pantry puts on food drives, they have community gardens where they can procure some fruits and vegetables and their many volunteers save them funds that they can use towards groceries. The pantry’s biggest contributor is Redwood Empire Food Bank out of Santa Rosa, which gives them food at a reduced cost.
“They get donations from all over the place … Markets and farmers and providers,” said Denny. “So there’s a food list that comes out every week and Tammy [Alakszay] accesses that and per the budget that we have for our Wednesday pantry, she’s able to get a pretty normative diet of food.”
But sometimes paying for food can still be a struggle. “If times are tough, it’s tough all over,” Alakszay said. “There’s always need for more, with those numbers growing the way they’ve been growing.”
“We have to be very careful and we’re being affected by the rising costs of food so we have to be budget conscious when we order food for our pantry,” Denny said.
However, the increased cost of groceries affects more than just the budget for the food pantry. NCO has a backpack program providing items for low income kids in the county’s elementary schools. Food costs are taken out of their budget for that program. Denny also serves about 800 low-income seniors throughout the county, contracting directly with the Redwood Empire Food Bank. He obtains 40-pound boxes of goods once a month for all seniors over the age of 60 who need the helping hand. “It’s always a challenge because there’s more people that are hungry than we are able to provide ample amounts of food,” Denny said.
So why is it so difficult for people to afford to feed themselves and their families? The price of food is just one part of the story, said Denny. Add in the cost of rent and utilities, transporting kids to and from school, getting to doctors appointments and meetings, plus very costly medical expenses and that leaves little funds left over for groceries. “Health care costs are incredible. Medi-Cal doesn’t cover all medications for all health issues. [That] is a big factor that contributes to the fact that they cannot afford food,” Denny said.
These expenses are not unique to the area, but the county is worse off than the rest of the state and Denny said that the social climate is to blame. “Lake County has some significant social issues. Very real ones.”
The food pantry can’t deal with these issues, but they can try to combat food related concerns, which include food insecurity and hunger, two different but related problems. “Hunger is the pain in the gut from not having enough food to eat,” Denny explained. “Food insecurity is not being able to afford to feed your family nutritious food.” Both are all too common in the area.
“We’re addressing food insecurity and hunger in a significant way,” Denny said. But NCO needs some extra help, especially with the current state of grocery prices. “We need to find other ways from the public sector and other people who donate to make it happen. It’s always a bigger challenge as more and more people are identified because of the rising cost of food.”
The Middletown Senior Center receives two grants and money from the county and the Redwood Health Care District to help with the funds for their yearly budget, which averages $200,000. But the money that they don’t get from these organizations has to be fundraised or covered by donations. “Right now through different local donations we’re still staying afloat,” Tourville said. “We just do extra fundraisers to raise money to bridge the gap between rising costs.”
Like NCO, the center also relies on the Redwood Empire Food Bank, an organization that clearly plays a big part in providing budget-conscious groceries to much of Lake County. “We can get cheaper produce through them,” said Tourville. Denny confirmed that the food bank gives the best deals on fresh fruits and vegetables. “We get most produce for 3 cents a pound,” he said.
With an average of 100 meals served a day, the Middletown Senior Center has had to make some adjustments when purchasing their food. “We definitely switch gears a little more and try to buy more of what’s on sale through US Foods,” Tourville said, adding that items that are in season are also more cost effective. But as a requirement for one of their grants, the center always has to serve healthy meals with certain amounts vitamins and adequate nutritional values.
The center’s most affected program is their meals on wheels, whose participants have less of an ability to pay. The center asks for a $5 donations for lunches, whether that’s in the center or home delivery, but those at home are only able to pay less than $2. “We really have to do the fundraising for the meals on wheels program to keep it going,” Tourville said. But thankfully, they’re still able to serve the seniors. “We haven’t had to stop any meal service or anything like that,”
Not all senior centers in the area appear to be experiencing these problems. According to Tracy Thomas of the Live Oaks Senior Center in Clearlake Oaks, the center doesn’t see an increase in people when food gets more expensive. “From what I understand, the center for lunch has stayed pretty much the same for quite a while,” said Thomas, adding that their food bill hasn’t increased either. “I haven’t seen a fluctuation in what they’ve been paying on a monthly basis for food.”
Thomas did say that the center looks for sales and deals and also takes donations, but they don’t seem to have to go to the same lengths as the Middletown center. “We have a vendor that works with us on deals,” said Thomas. “We take a donation and we offset our costs a little bit by that.”
If prices are taking a toll on the Live Oaks Senior Center, Thomas hasn’t experienced complaints. “I haven’t heard people talking about, ‘Oh my God, the cost of groceries has gone way up,’” she said.
Whatever the individual case may be, it’s obvious that Lake County overall has a good deal of food related issues, and local organizations are doing whatever they can to help ease the situation, despite being affected themselves. Denny said that Jaques Diouf put it best: “Hunger is not an issue of charity, it is an issue of justice.”
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
