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Gary Brown works at Gleaners food bank in Detroit, which is struggling to keep up with its 325 pantries.Hunger aid shrinks as need grows
One million need help in Mich.; charities, food banks struggle
Rebecca Johnson, left, Providence Missionary Baptist Church's food pantry head, hugs Jackie Overton, who survives on $600 a month from Social Security and the food bank.
For more information about making healthy food choices, consult the food guide pyramid or visit the USDA web site.
Or write to:
USDA's Team Nutrition
3101 Park Center Drive, Room 632
Alexandria, VA 22302
Phone: (703) 305-1624
Fax: (703) 305-2549
To find out whether you are eligible for food stamps, call (800) 481-4989.
Sources: American Red Cross of Michigan, Food Bank Council of Michigan, Food Nutrition Center/USDA, Bread for the World, Second Harvest, state of Michigan.
Food Bank Council of Michigan's homepage
The Food Bank Council of Michigan is a statewide non-profit organization that gathers food and funds to help stock Michigan's regional food banks.
The State of Michigan's Family Independence Agency site with an overview, conditions of elegibility, forms and publications for the Food Assistance Program
The federal Food & Nutrition Service's food assistance site or call (800) 481-4989
Questions and Answers About Getting and Using Food Stamps in downloadable PDF format
The federal Food & Nutrition Service's Women, Infants, and Children site
Michigan's WIC site or call the MIchigan Department of Community Health, toll-free in-state, at (800) 942-1636
WIC fact sheets in downloadable PDF format
Learn if you or someone you know might be eligible for food stamps
Call them at (800) 552-4483 for the pantry nearest you.
Jackie Reed, a divorced mother of children ages 14, 5 and 4, visits food pantries regularly. She suffers from an eye inflammation that prevents her from working.
Job Chaves, left, and Claude Kilby of Freedom House load food at Detroit's Gleaners food bank, which may soon have to tap into its food reserves.
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WASHINGTON — By Jeri Lynn Egan’s own definition, her life was plush. She had a four-bedroom house on 5 acres just outside of Traverse City, a successful business and a baby on the way.
Then the breakup of her marriage began a long downward spiral that eventually thrust her into a fast-growing category: the hungry.
The number of hungry Americans rose to 34.9 million during the past three years because of the nation’s economic downturn and other socioeconomic factors, such as an increase in single-parent households. But longer-term trends also are at work.
Since the early 1970s, wages at the lower end of the economic scale haven’t risen as much as those at the high end, and wealth in America has slowly been concentrating in fewer hands, federal statistics show.
In Michigan, more than 950,000 people are expected to get some form of government food assistance this year, up 64 percent from 2000.
“It could happen to anybody at anytime,” Egan said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re blue collar, white collar — life happens. My pride was shattered, but you have to rise above it and do what you have to do.’’
Support for the nation’s food assistance programs has historically been high. But as Congress prepares to vote for renewal of federal programs, experts say the federal budget deficit and other economic concerns could keep the programs from getting enough money to meet rising needs. The food stamp program alone cost $24 billion in 2003.
People like Egan — who received help temporarily and went on to become an advocate and volunteer for the hungry — are worried.
“I had no job and a mortgage and no income,” said Egan, who, with an infant in tow, for the first time in her life sought help from a food bank in Acme, just outside of Traverse City. “I had no day care and no family. Family would come from hundreds of miles away to help me, but they have their lives, too.”
Charities under stress
Along with government help, some 2,700 food banks and local charities in Michigan distribute food. All are under rising stress because of the economic downturn, which boosted the ranks of the needy while cutting into donations from corporations and individuals.
“Right now we are really in a crunch for financing,” said Rebecca Johnson, who runs the food pantry at Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Pontiac. On average, the pantry hands out food to about 160 residents to take home to the people in their households, but recently that number rose to a record 188 households.
“We ran out of food. We just didn’t have enough to give to everybody,” Johnson said. “I see it’s rough and I see it’s getting worse. I thought it was going to get better, but I don’t see how.”
Roughly 744,000 people in 2001 made use of a food pantry, according to the Food Bank Council of Michigan; 43.6 percent of them were children. The Council estimates that there are currently about 1 million people in the state in need of emergency food. Ironically, many of those in need are working, some holding down full-time jobs.
“All of our agencies are seeing increases at different levels. And those levels we have had reported to us are as much as 10 to 20 percent,” said Agostinho Fernandes, president of Gleaners Community Food Bank, the largest in the state, serving 325 pantries in southeast Michigan.
“We know that some people’s unemployment benefits are ceasing,” he said. “People who may have in the past qualified but were hesitant to seek food assistance are now seeking food assistance.”
With food and monetary donations down, Fernandes said if the right mix and amount of food does not come in this summer, the agency may have to tap into reserves for the first time in recent memory.
Senior citizens vulnerable
Especially vulnerable to hunger are children and senior citizens like Jackie Overton. Every third Monday of the month she lines up for vegetables, fruit, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, jelly, bread or crackers, soup, and sometimes — if she’s lucky — turkey, tuna fish or ham, potatoes, onions and dried milk.
At 88, the former housekeeper knows that without the food baskets given out by her church, Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Pontiac, she would go hungry.
“I’m on a fixed income and I don’t get much income. So when I get that food every month, that’s a blessing for me,” said Overton, who “gets around” despite two knee replacements — a hazard of her employment. “They didn’t have all the things they have now. Back then, doing the floors and things, I crawled around on my knees. But I did it and it was an honest living and I was proud of it.” Today, she nets about $600 a month from Social Security.
“By the time you pay your bills — your rent, your utilities and all, you come up short. So that’s where the food bank comes in. You would come up short. ... That food is a lot of help to me.”
By the end of each month, Overton has run out of nearly all the food she has purchased with her food stamps or that she has gotten from the food bank.
“When I see that on TV where they say feed the children who (are) hungry, there are a lot of people here who (are) hungry, especially the children. I have a feeling that if there were not food at the school, a lot of these children would go without any food,” said the Forest City, Ark., native.
More of the same
The Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill is waiting for its turn before Congress. Six years ago, the bill passed unanimously, without fanfare. The same is expected this year.
“You will not see new programs and expanded funding,” said Edward M. Cooney, executive director of the Congressional Hunger Center, a nonprofit anti-hunger group in Washington founded by former members of Congress.
“Given the budget constraints that are present, I do think the staff has done a marvelous job to do what they can do and it has taken them a couple of years to do it. As a bill that will decrease hunger in America, it won’t do it.”
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, who sits on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry committee, said the nation must think about its priorities, and she compared the costs of the war in Iraq — $152 billion authorized and requested to date — with the growing domestic need for food support.
“There is something wrong when there is such willingness to run to spend money for a health care system in Iraq with American dollars, and to build roads and address hunger issues, and yet we don’t see that same attention and priority here in our country,” she said.
Roberta Trzos, director of development and human resources for the Food Bank of Oakland County, which serves about 32,000 people a month through 200 pantry sites, agrees.
“Nobody, nobody should be hungry in Oakland County, and really in all of America. It is just not acceptable.”
Feeding family for $2
Jackie Reed, 34, of Brighton, the divorced mother of children aged 14, 5 and 4, is struggling to keep up with the paperwork required for her food stamps. One dot left unconnected or one T not crossed and an already impossible situation becomes worse.
“One time I can remember I actually watched my kids eat and I didn’t,” she said. The experience taught her how to hustle. “I can turn a bean and a can of sauerkraut into something if I have to. I can make things work. You become ingenious. You can go and buy 3 pounds of collard greens for a few dollars. I can feed my family for $2.
“I went hungry one time and I will never let that happen again, if I have to drive to every food bank in the country,” said Reed, who suffers from an inflammation of the eye, making it nearly impossible for her to work.
Not high-profile issue
Most lawmakers are aware of the problem of hunger, but rarely make it a high-profile issue. The presidential campaign has focused on other problems.
But President Bush “recognizes that there are too many people in our nation who are hungry and who are hurting,” said White House spokesman Jim Morrell, pointing to comments made by Bush at the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives last week.
“There are people in our neighborhoods who are addicted and lonely and homeless and hungry,” Bush told 2,000 religious leaders and social workers. “Those of us who have had the high honor of holding office must utilize every resource, every power we have to help solve those problems for the good of the country.”
Bush, Morrell said, has supported a number of projects to help address the issue of hunger. On the state level he has called for increasing money for the federal food stamp program and in his 2005 budget Bush calls for $30 billion for the program, an increase of more than $5 billion over 2003.
Even if that recommendation clears Congress, advocates still worry about funding of the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program and school lunch program next year as well as declining private support of food banks.
Complicating matters is the federal government’s effort to give the states more responsibility for welfare programs, making it more complex and ambiguous for those who might qualify not only for food stamps, but also the WIC program and the school lunch program.
“If either Kerry or Bush would begin to talk about an effective way to end hunger, it would help them get elected,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a national Christian citizens movement to end hunger. “Those politicians who step forward and suggest ideas for effective strategies for decreasing hunger will increase voter support.
“We are trying to food bank our way to the end of hunger and that will not happen. We have got to get our government to do their part.”
For the vast majority of Americans, the problem isn’t visible. Asked to list problems facing the nation, they rarely include hunger among them.
Voters, Beckmann said, “aren’t insisting that we end the problem of hunger in America. This is a fixable problem. None of the other industrialized countries put up with hunger within their borders.”
Shame was overwhelming
For Mary Ann Sever of Royal Oak, the problem is very visible.
Last Thanksgiving she and her husband, Frank, got into their car and headed to the local food bank. It was their first visit. The shame was overwhelming.
Five months later, she would find herself in the same position, but this time her husband would not be waiting outside to help her load the box of groceries or to swear her to secrecy.
The Severs had spent most of their savings to pay for Mary Ann’s medical bills after a car accident. While being treated for her injuries, doctors discovered a brain tumor that Sever’s auto insurance would not pay for.
Over five years of therapy and hospital visits and treatments, the Severs exhausted their pension and health insurance. It also wiped out their savings. Then Frank was diagnosed with lung cancer.
They mortgaged the house they purchased for $19,900 in 1973.
On April 3, Frank died of pneumonia. His ashes were buried April 26, on their 46th wedding anniversary.
“I didn’t know when I would get my Social Security benefits and I was having trouble getting his life insurance benefits,” Mary Ann said. “It’s a whole new can of worms for me to become a widow. So I went down there because I didn’t know when anything was coming in.”
Sever wept at the thought of her husband knowing that she returned to the food bank.
“Charity begins at home. There are a lot of people who need help. There are a lot of people who fall on hard times. It’s not that they are lazy.
“I know people with college degrees that are stacking groceries at the grocery store because they don’t have a job. There are a lot of people out there and you do not even know it.”
Alison Bethel can be reached at (202) 906-8202 or abethel@detnews.com.
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