Orange County food bank leaders don’t see the need for food dropping anytime soon after a sharp increase in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and a food cliff that hit not long after when beefed up food stamps ended.
It comes ahead of 2023’s holiday season – the busiest time of year for food drives.
Claudia Keller, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank OC, said in a phone interview last week that she expected the increased need in the county to have dropped back to 2019 levels when the pandemic subsided but that hasn’t been the case.
“I would have guessed it would have been back to normal by now or even last year. But there’s just simply been literally one hit after another to those folks that are at the south end of the socioeconomic scale,” Keller said.
Those hits include high inflation costs of food as well as an end to increased COVID-19 food assistance and other benefits for families that came to a halt earlier this year – a combination that made leaders like Keller earlier this year warn that OC was heading for a food cliff.
[Read: Millions of Californians Are About to Lose COVID Food Benefits; OC Braces for ‘Food Cliff’]
Mark Lowry, director of the OC Food Bank, said those increased welfare benefits during the pandemic helped drive down food insecurity and child poverty for a while in Orange County.
“Now, those additional benefits that were instituted during COVID have all expired and so – almost predictably – we’re seeing poverty, food insecurity, child poverty rising again,” he said in a phone interview last week.
“This is all happening at a time where we’re seeing record inflation.”
The Second Harvest Food Bank, on average, fed about 250,000 people a month in 2019.
In the following years, that number has remained above 330,000 – shooting up too close to 490,000 people in 2021, according to the food bank.
This year, Second Harvest has been feeding on average over 390,000 people a month.
The food insecurity rate in OC is projected to be close to 13.7% as compared to 8.5% in 2018, according to the OC Hunger Alliance – a coalition of organizations looking to tackle food insecurity.
Orange County has a population of roughly 3.2 million people, according to census data.
People looking to donate to or volunteer with local organizations like Second Harvest Food Bank, the OC Food Bank can do so at the links provided here.
For food assistance options, visit 211 OC
Food Insecurity Increases Across The U.S.
Lowry and Keller’s concerns come on the heels of a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study released in October this year, which found that 17 million households across the country – close to 13% of American families – didn’t have dependable access to enough healthy food in 2022.
It’s an increase from roughly 14 million households facing food insecurity in 2021 and 2020 – during the height of the pandemic.
To read the full USDA report, click here.
Lowry said the report backs up what they’ve been seeing on the ground and the need for food is probably elevated in Orange County.
“Because of our extraordinarily high cost of living, everything that’s experienced elsewhere in the country is magnified here,” he said.
Keller said she worries about food insecurity rates among children.
About 9% of households with kids – rough 3.3 million families – were food insecure in 2022, according to the report.
“We are fortunate here that our schools in Orange County do provide free meals for the children,” Keller said. “We’re still feeding 1,200 kids in our after school feeding program that has not changed so there is still cause for concern among food insecure children in our county.”
Keller said her food bank feeds about 130,000 children per month.
According to state data, more than 90% of students at some schools in working class neighborhoods like Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange qualify for free lunches – a benchmark on student poverty.
Orange County’s Food Cliff
Keller said the USDA study only covered 2022 when people were still receiving increased CalFresh food benefits and assistance for costs like rent.
“People had more help in ‘22. That financial assistance sunset in early ‘23. So if you think of it logically, the situation is probably far worse on a national level,” she said. “Folks are really feeling the pressure of not having those benefits.”
Lowry, Keller and other food bank leaders across the state earlier this year warned of an impending food cliff due to inflation and the end COVID-19 food benefits – with OC’s neediest residents losing $30 million in food spending a month.
Keller said the drop in people’s ability to buy food wasn’t as precipitous as initially expected but also acknowledged there has been a steady rise in food insecurity.
She said however they do expect the need for food to decrease back to pre-pandemic levels in OC eventually.
“It’s just a matter of when.”
Lowry said that the number of people who are food insecure has been growing in OC, but it can be reversed at the policy level.
“Largely what it takes is greater investment from the government, particularly the federal government, and now that we’ve seen them withdraw from those commitments, we see poverty and food insecurity rise again,” he said.
Lowry said it’s possible for the government to step in quickly as they did in the pandemic.
“It’s within our power to see a decrease rather than increase,” he said. “We can’t end poverty and hunger alone.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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