Working poor swell hunger rolls in city
Zack Burgess
Tribune Correspondent
A young police officer, a mother of three, someone who puts her life on the line every day for the city of Philadelphia is having trouble feeding her family. How did things go so wrong?
The great Langston Hughes once wrote that there is nothing more disheartening than “A dream deferred.” And it’s obvious this is not what this officer envisioned for herself as her eyes dropped, her back turned and she refused to talk about what is an obviously painful situation.
So, how did she end up in a cupboard gathering food for her children?
“It happens,” said Sister Mary Scullion, co-founder of Project H.O.M.E here in Philadelphia. “I think we as a nation have to open our eyes to the suffering all around us and come to grips with the fact that people are going hungry — people with jobs. The mere fact that this is happening is a prophetic sign that something is wrong in our society and with our economy.”
In a city where the size of the budget rivals that of some small countries, Philadelphia has a hunger problem.
Every two years, Philadelphia Health Management Corporation conducts a Household Health Survey for Southeastern Pennsylvania, which includes several questions on household food security.
Currently, according to the advocacy organization Coalition Against Hunger, there are nearly 122,000 households in Southeastern Pennsylvania that must reduce the size of meals or skip meals entirely because they cannot afford food purchases. Those 122,000 households include nearly 61,000 children.
The Tribune tried to get an interview with the school district about this matter, but no comment was available at press time. According to some sources, there are schools within the district where the entire elementary and junior high school population gets free lunch because children are not eating at home.
The funding for the commonwealth’s School Food Services program increased slightly from $29.6 million for fiscal year 2007-08 to $30.6 million for the coming fiscal year.
The U.S. Census Bureau, using figures that are the measuring stick for the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind policy, reports that nearly one-third of Philadelphia’s students, from pre-school through high school, live in poverty.
“I think the mere fact that people are out there struggling to eat is a warning sign that there is something wrong with our system,” Scullion went on to say. “The people have to address these economic hardships that are devastating to so many people — or we’re all going to go under. We have to remember that it’s not by the grace of God go I, but there go I. We’re all apart of inescapable network.”
According to the Coalition Against Hunger, here in Philadelphia over 50 percent of food stamp participants are children and 8 percent are elderly citizens.
In fiscal year 2005, of all food stamp households, 84 percent contained either an elderly or disabled person or a child, and these households received 89 percent of all food stamp benefits. Commonly referred to as the “working poor,” many food stamp users who are employed full-time still earn poverty level wages, making it difficult to afford food.
“This is my life,” said Sister Patience Jacobs, 71, of Southwest Philadelphia, who runs a cupboard at 47th and Kingsessing. “I know what it is to be without food. So this has become my ministry, to feed people.”
Sister Patience was once a mother who found herself in a predicament after she and her husband split up.
“I was in a situation where my husband took care of everything. Me and my children lived a nice life, but when things went wrong and we broke up, I found myself struggling,” Patience said. “That’s how I ended up here. Unfortunately, that’s the case with many women, especially middle- to lower-middle class women, who go through divorce or separation.”
Community feeding programs include food cupboards and soup kitchens where volunteers provide food to their neighbors free of charge, usually with the help of volunteers.
In 2006 the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger conducted a survey of 169 community-feeding programs. Forty-two percent of the community feeding programs responded that they “generally did not have enough food to distribute to meet their current demand.”
Eighty-two percent said that they had more people coming to their feeding program in the past year compared to the year before. And the reasons for this increase included a myriad of responses including the following: A lack of jobs, unemployment, food stamps cut-off or run out before the end of the month, grandmothers who are raising second families, young men raising children by themselves, city shelters around the area closing or reducing services, people getting out of prison who are treated with respect by feeding program, tighter restrictions in other programs, people forced to choose between food and medicine, increasing costs and “incomes aren’t increasing, but costs are.”
Due to a lack of enough resources such as money, food, equipment and volunteers, 59 percent said that they had to reduce the amount of food distributed to each person and 47 percent said that they had to turn people away.
“There are people out here starving, eating out of trash cans,” said Scullion. “As rich as this nation and city is, people should not be going hungry.”
A man at 30th Street station, wearing a nice sweater, jacket and corduroy pants and who looked as normal as the next guy, went into the trash can and grabbed an Au Bon Pan bag.
Someone had thrown away part of the sandwich. After a quick look around, he proceeded to eat what was left of a sandwich.
Sadly, this is happening right here in Philadelphia.
“A lot of the people who we feed are everyday working people,” said Sydelle Zove, Interim Food Stamp Campaign Manager for the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. “They are people who are out here making $10, sometimes $12 an hour, just trying to make ends meet.”
Unfortunately, not one community-feeding program expected to see a decrease in clients coming to them for food.
Eighty percent responded that they anticipated that the demand for food from their feeding program would increase in 2008. Eleven percent were unsure and nine percent thought that the demand for food from their feeding program would stay about the same as in 2006.
Additionally, 63 percent responded that they expect the demand for food from their feeding program by families with children will increase.
Even with the increase of people who will need food in the coming year, there is no significant increase in fiscal year 2008-09 for funding state programs designed to fight hunger.
The Food Stamp Outreach program is up slightly to $487,000, only $47,000 more than in FY 2007-08.
The Farm, School Nutrition Initiative remained the same at $500,000 for the coming fiscal year and the Farmer’s Market Nutrition program dropped $250,000 from $2.25 million in FY 2007-08 to $2 million for FY 2008-09.
“When you look at the situation, it’s not a pretty one as people continue to have to deal with this,” said Ann Ayella of the Nutritional development services. “But unfortunately this is the reality of the situation. The question is: What are we going to do about it?”
|