Staff at Bread for the City, a venerable charity in America’s capital, thought they were ready for this year’s annual Holiday Helpers food drive ahead of Thanksgiving. The COVID-19 pandemic had faded, but inflation was high, so they budgeted for 12,000 meals, 20% more than normal pre-pandemic levels.
But they were quickly overwhelmed, with long lines of customers waiting hours for a free turkey and a $50 debit card to buy groceries. They were forced to close three days early after helping 16,000 people, far more than they anticipated.
“We don’t want to re-traumatize our community by making them wait outside for four hours for a turkey,” said Ashley Domm, director of development for the charity. “We are not prepared to have hundreds of people lining up on a city street.”
The Bread for the City experience reflects a larger dynamic that is unfolding across the country. What many Americans had hoped would be the first normal Christmas season in three years has instead entered a heightened hunger crisis once again, with Christmas on the horizon.
A September report from the Urban Institute—a Washington-based economic and social policy research group—estimated that about 1 in 5 adults experienced food insecurity at home last summer, about the same number as the first year of the pandemic, but a sharp increase compared to spring 2021. Black and Hispanic adults reported higher rates of food insecurity than their white counterparts, according to the report.
“During the pandemic, nobody had a job and nobody had money,” said Nancy Murphy, a 45-year-old caregiver who picked up a frozen turkey and groceries last week from a donation at Church of God New Wine Assembly Parish The Redeemed Christian , in northeast Washington. “Now they are back at their jobs, but the money is not enough. It’s still hard.”
The government estimates that food prices will rise between 9.5% and 10.5% this year. And that’s putting a strain on the budgets of many Americans and the food banks that have helped them, especially after the massive flow of pandemic aid expired.
“Inflation has been the story of the year,” said Michael Altfest, director of community engagement at the Alameda County Food Bank in Oakland, California.
Altfest added that the level of need in the community is still 50% to 70% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and about 30% of calls to the food bank’s emergency helpline are of people who call for the first time.
In many cases, charities and food banks had prepared for higher numbers due to inflation, only to find that the level of need had far exceeded their projections.
The Capital Area Food Bank in Washington originally estimated that it would need to distribute about 43 million meals during the budget year of July 2022 to June 2023. Now, four months into that fiscal year, it is already a 22% above those predictions.
“That was an informed prediction with a good four or five months of data,” said Radha Muthiah, CEO of the food bank. “We are always thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas just when everyone heads to the beach in the summer.”
In Illinois, Jim Conwell of the Greater Chicago Food Bank says the need is still high. “So we’re buying more and spending more on what we buy,” he said.
His organization’s network served approximately 30% more homes in August 2022 compared to the previous August.
“Families that were just getting things right are experiencing a whole new challenge, or even if they are employed, or have multiple jobs or sources of income, (money) just isn’t performing the same as it did two years ago,” he added.
Higher prices are forcing people to make “food sacrifices,” Altfest said.
For example, he said, the price of chicken has more than doubled, from 78 cents a pound (453 grams) last year to $1.64 a pound this year. Estimates from the Farm Bureau foundation put the cost of turkey at 21% higher than last year. And marketing researcher Datasembly estimates that a 16-ounce (453-gram) box of stuffing costs 14% more than last year, and a five-pound (2.27-kilo) bag of Russet potatoes costs an average of $45.5 % plus.
Mike Manning, president of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank in Louisiana, makes a distinction between the rising levels of hunger caused by the pandemic and the current crisis. During the pandemic, millions of people’s jobs and incomes all but disappeared, creating an immediate wave of need that he likened to the aftermath of a hurricane.
But the current crisis has been a slow and steady increase that began in late February and continues to rise. Manning said his food bank has seen a 10% to 15% increase in local food insecurity in just the last two months.
“You’re talking to people who have lower incomes and have multiple jobs; you just have to think about the cost of going from job to job, with gasoline eating up whatever extra they are trying to earn,” she added. “What are they going to do? Do they give up gas, and therefore can’t get to work, or do they sacrifice themselves on food and come back and ask us for help?”
And with no clear indication of when the wave of inflation might subside in the long term, “this almost feels more like a marathon with no finish line in sight,” said Conwell, of the Chicago food bank.
Domm recalls the lines at Bread for the City that “stayed overwhelmingly long” for weeks.
The fact that customers were willing to wait outside for hours for a turkey and a debit card speaks to “the intensity and depth of the need,” he said.
Domm also believes there’s a psychological element at play as well: After two consecutive pandemic-hit Christmas seasons, families are very eager for something closer to normalcy.
“People have avoided meeting their families for the last two years. So this year there is more pressure to get groceries and have a group meal,” she said.