Tag Archives: Food Pantry

Bronx Food Pantry asks for help after running out of food first time in 10 years

Food-Pantry-runs-out

Important Takeaways:

  • Bronx food pantry empty for first time in 10 years, forcing them to turn families away
  • The shelves at a Bronx food pantry have been bare for the past two weeks as hungry New Yorkers face heightened food insecurity at the beginning of the New Year.
  • The Albanian American Open Hand Association (AAOHA), located in Pelham Parkway, fed around 800 weekly before the pandemic, but that has since doubled to 1,600.
  • For the first time in 10 years, the pantry has been forced to turn people away.

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Food Banks are seeing shortages as inflation continues and more families are in need of food

Food Banks

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • Food Banks and Pantries Facing Shortages as Demand Spikes, but ‘God Shows Up’
  • Food banks and pantries nationwide are struggling to keep up with demand. Soaring food prices combined with fewer donations are leading to thinly stocked shelves. The impact is making it more challenging to feed the hungry, especially this time of year.
  • Pastor Stephanie Parker of The Gathering at Scott Memorial United Methodist Church told CBN News.
  • For the past ten years, the church has hosted Fresh Food Wednesdays, an outreach distributing food to the community’s working poor.
  • “Every week we hit a new record of new families,” said Parker. “Many have tears in their eyes as they thank us and also as they say, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever needed this.'”
  • According to Feeding America President Katie Fitzgerald, “High prices will continue to drive more and more of our neighbors to food banks and food pantries as we enter the winter season.”
  • Meanwhile, donations have decreased over the last few months for many food banks.
  • Christopher Tan heads the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and the Eastern Shore.
  • “Down pretty significantly, 20 percent or so in the last six months,”
  • Despite the challenges with keeping the shelves stocked, the team at The Gathering at Scott Memorial UMC trusts that God will continue to provide.

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Anxious Americans to pay debt, taxes with COVID-19 stimulus checks

By Tim Reid

(Reuters) – Michael Johnson, a construction worker in Washington, D.C., is waiting for the $1,400 check from the government promised after U.S. President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill last week.

He’s not planning a spending spree. He’s nervous. “I’ll try and get ahead on my mortgage a little bit. You know, we are still in this pandemic,” Johnson, 45, said.

Almost 900 miles away in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Aric Nowicki runs a heating and air conditioning business that takes in about $150,000 annually but has expenses of about $100,000. He has clients who are late on their bills, and he plans to use his money to pay his own overdue bills.

“I’m very apprehensive,” Nowicki said. “I’m not sure the vaccines will bring us back to normality. Too many people say they don’t want to take it, and there are these mutations.”

In interviews with a dozen Americans, including a nurse, a man made homeless by the pandemic, a plumber, a teacher, and a bar owner, nearly all say they are so worried about the future that they will use their stimulus checks to pay debt and taxes accumulated in the past year.

Those spending priorities are not what massive stimulus bills are traditionally meant to achieve. They are designed to encourage people to buy goods and services, to help U.S. businesses and create jobs.

Labor economist Diane Swonk sees a divide between those who can work from home and those who cannot – highlighted by the ways Americans have spent their stimulus checks from the government during the year-long coronavirus pandemic.

Consumer spending on goods was quite robust in January, Swonk said. But that was mostly by people who did not necessarily need the three checks sent out by the U.S. Treasury in the past year. Most who desperately needed the money have used it for food, shelter, and to pay debt. “This gets to the issue that a rising tide does not lift all boats,” Swonk said.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked on Monday how Biden expected people to spend their stimulus checks.

“They will use it for different means,” Psaki said. “Some Americans will use it to ensure they can put food on the table, that’s a form of stimulus. Some will use it to ensure that they can pay their rent. That’s a form of stimulus. It’s up to family to family.”

Reverend Lee May, the pastor of Transforming Faith Church, an ecumenical Christian church in suburban Atlanta, said members of his congregation “really need this boost.”

“This is intended to help and we feel blessed to have it sent our way, but it isn’t enough to make us whole,” May said. “We know there are prohibitions on evictions and shut offs of utilities for now, but those rent and light bills don’t go away.”

“More needs to be done,” he said.

Reginald Smith, 36, a cook who was laid off in the crisis as many restaurants closed, was waiting in line at the food pantry outside the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta on Monday.

He lost his place to stay and he has been “couch surfing” at the homes of friends.

“I need a job and hope to get one once this all opens back up,” he said. “But first I need my own place to stay. I’m hoping that this (the stimulus check) will help me make a deposit, get a place and get back on my feet. I wish it was more though. I don’t know if this is enough to dig me out.”

Others are more optimistic. Steve Pitts, the general manager of Manuel’s Tavern in Midtown Atlanta, hopes the stimulus checks will give people more cash to go out.

“We’re hoping it loosens things up a bit,” Pitts said. “To say it’s been a tough year isn’t the half of it. We all need a break. We’ve had to let people go and it hurt. This, of course, isn’t the cure. We’re all waiting for this crisis to be over, but maybe this is a little light, a little bump.”

Thadd Ernstmeyer, who runs a family plumbing business in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, grosses about $150,000 a year, with overheads about one third of that, and is taxed roughly 25%. His stimulus check would go toward his tax bill, Ernstmeyer said.

“It’s going straight back to the government.”

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Washington and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Donna Bryson and Grant McCool)

Sign of the times: Mile-long line of cars outside California grocery giveaway

By Lucy Nicholson

VAN NUYS, Calif. (Reuters) – A pop-up food pantry in Southern California on Thursday drew so many people that the line of cars waiting for free groceries stretched about a mile (1.6 km), a haunting sign of how the coronavirus pandemic has hurt the working poor.

Hundreds of other people, many wearing trash bags to shelter from the rain, arrived at the one-day grocery giveaway on foot, forming a blocks-long queue in Van Nuys, in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles.

People pick up fresh food at a Los Angeles Regional Food Bank giveaway of 2,000 boxes of groceries, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 9, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Organizers said they had enough groceries to hand out to more than 2,500 families, with each receiving a 36-pound (16-kg) box of rice, lentils and other staples as well as frozen chicken, oranges and other foods.

“I have six kids and it’s difficult to eat. My husband was working in construction but now we can’t pay the rent,” said Juana Gomez, 50, of North Hollywood, as she waited for her turn.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shut down nonessential businesses across the United States, with more than 90% of Americans under some kind of stay-at-home order, depriving millions of a paycheck.

The northeast part of Los Angeles, home to many working poor Latino families, has been especially hard hit.

LA Regional Food Bank supplied the food donated outside Van Nuys City Hall. Its president, Michael Flood, said such giveaways were becoming an increasingly important way to help feed people in need, with “one or two a day” being held in different locations in Los Angeles County.

Thursday’s food giveaway — coordinated by Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez in partnership with the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and Labor Community Services — was open to anyone in need.

“This food saves me money because my little income goes to my rent,” said Daniel Jimenez, 40, an independent contractor for golf tournaments whose young children joined him to pick up food.

“I haven’t been working for three weeks. I have a little money saved but I’m paying rent, gas, and cellphone bills. I don’t even know when we’re going back to work,” he said.

As he spoke, volunteers shouted constant reminders to those who walked up to maintain social distancing.

“For a lot of people, they are new to the situation of needing help and not knowing where to turn,” Flood said, noting many people were now suddenly filing for unemployment and government food assistance programs.

“But that may take some time for them to get those benefits. We want to do what we can to get food in the hands of families, just so they can eat,” he said.

(Writing by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Tom Brown)