TEFAP Alliance Blog

January 2005

In This Issue:
• New Congress Faces Budget Challenges
• Cities Document Marked Increase in Hunger and Homelessness
• National Groups Donate Trucks to a Dozen Food Banks
• More Bonus Being Offered
• Schools Testing Sunflower Seed Butter
• Reports from the Field
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New Congress Faces Budget Challenges
The l09th session of the U.S. Congress, which convened on January 4, 2005, will face significant challenges in maintaining basic government services while trying to reduce the federal budget deficit. Program reductions are expected to be proposed in the coming months for food and nutrition assistance, as well as for other programs that serve low-income people.
President George Bush and incoming Senate Budget Committee chair Judd Gregg (R-NH) have both publicly expressed their desire to cut the deficit by half within the next five years. More details on how the Administration will attempt to accomplish that goal will be provided in the President’s State of the Union address on February 2 and in the proposed fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget being submitted to Congress on February 7.
According to news reports, the President has instructed each federal agency to submit two budgets for the upcoming fiscal year – one with a five percent cut in all non-defense or homeland security spending and another with a 10 percent reduction.
In a joint alert issued on December 16, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) president Jim Weill and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities executive director Bob Greenstein warned anti-hunger advocates that, “Safeguarding the structure and funding for the food stamp, child nutrition, and other federal safety net programs will be a challenge in 2005. While it is too early to predict the scope or specifics of proposed cuts for the FY 2006 federal budget, proposals could involve deep cuts, basic changes in entitlement programs in a fast track ‘reconciliation’ bill and/or imposition of ‘spending caps’ on entitlement programs. Any of these changes would threaten the ability of programs to serve people in need.”

Cities Document Marked Increase in Hunger and Homelessness
Hunger and homelessness in major American cities continued to rise in 2004, according to the annual survey of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, released on December 14, 2004. Requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent over 2003 in 96 percent of the 27 cities included in the survey. Emergency shelter needs rose an average of six percent, with 70 percent of cities experiencing an increase.
The hunger and homelessness numbers have increased every year since the Conference began collecting data 20 years ago, though the rate of increase for food requests was the lowest since 1998. “The good news here is that the increase in demand overall has slowed somewhat,” said Bill Purcell, Mayor of Nashville, TN. “The bad news is that the increased demand is all over the country,” he added.
The Mayor’s report found that, on average, 20 percent of requests for emergency food assistance went unmet in the last year. Nearly half (48 percent) of the cities reported that emergency food facilities had to turn people away due to lack of resources. All cities surveyed noted that both families and individuals relied on pantries and food banks as a steady source of food over long periods of time, not just in occasional emergency situations.
Unemployment and employment-related problems were the primary causes of hunger, city officials said. Low-paying jobs, high housing costs, poverty, medical expenses, substance abuse, and high utility costs were also contributing factors causing hunger.
Cities included in the survey were: Boston, MA; Burlington, VT; Cedar Rapids, IA; Charleston, SC; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Kansas City, MO; Louisville, KY; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; Nashville, TN; New Orleans, LA; Norfolk, VA; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Portland, OR; Providence, RI; St. Paul, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; San Antonio, TX; San Francisco, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle, WA; and Trenton, NJ.
For additional information, view the survey news release at:
http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/news/press_releases/documents/hunger_121404.pdf.

National Groups Donate Trucks to a Dozen Food Banks
In November 2004, for the fourth year in a row, a public-private partnership provided trucks and food to select members of the nation’s food bank network. Ford Motor Company, actor Paul Newman, sole owner of Newman’s Own, and America’s Second Harvest again teamed up to deliver refrigerated trucks to food banks that primarily serve rural areas.
Beneficiaries of this effort were: Capital Area Food Bank, Austin, TX; Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee, Gray, TN; Gleaners Community Food Bank, Detroit, MI; Tri State Food Bank, Evansville, IN; Great Plains Food Bank, Fargo, ND; God’s Pantry Food Bank, Lexington, KY; Middle Georgia Food Bank, Macon, GA; Food Bank of Northern Indiana, South Bend, IN; South Plains Food Bank, Lubbock, TX; America’s Second Harvest of Greater St Joseph, St. Joseph, MO; The Community Food Bank of Tucson, AZ; and Kansas Foodbank Warehouse, Wichita, KS.
For additional information, see the news release on the America’s Second Harvest web site at: http://www.secondharvest.org/site_content.asp?s=672&p=1.

More Bonus Being Offered
USDA has recently announced that the following items have been purchased because they are in surplus and will be available as bonus for TEFAP: cranberries (sauce, drink, and dried), figs, and sweet potatoes (canned and fresh).

Schools Testing Sunflower Seed Butter
In an effort to find more healthful alternatives to peanut butter, USDA has made a test buy of sunflower seed butter to gauge the acceptability among school children. The item has been sent to school food services in California, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee for use. Those states are being surveyed by USDA on product acceptance.

Reports from the Field
“More and more, we’re seeing working families in need of assistance,” said Jayne Wright, executive director of the Food Bank of Central Louisiana, as quoted in a USA Today article published on December 23, 2004. “Many of them are in service jobs, or making minimum wage. If you have kids, that isn’t going to pay the bills. We help meet the gap between paychecks. A lot of people will be getting by with less for the holidays this year,” Wright added. “But the reality is this isn’t a seasonal problem. It’s year-round.”
A lengthy article in the December 18, 2004 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, MO with the headline “Food stamp use is on rise across U.S.,” focused primarily on increased demand at food banks around the nation. Below are some excerpts from that article.
• “In the 1980s, soup kitchens were urban and largely served a recipient base that was male, homeless, chronically unemployed with alcohol or other substance abuse often as a contributing factor,” said Doug O’Brien, vice president for public policy and research at America’s Second Harvest in Chicago. “By 2001, one out of four persons was a child, 40 percent of them were working adults. What you’re seeing is this dramatic shift in the face of hunger in America.”
• At the Smith Chapel food bank in Logan, Ohio, cars recently started lining up at 7:30 a.m. for the 9 a.m. opening of the facility. By the time the doors opened, residents in late-model vans, SUVs, pickups and cars stretched more than two miles long outside the facility.
• “We don’t have enough hours in the day to serve everybody who comes in,” said John Holmer, executive director of Metro Caring, a food pantry in Denver, CO that assisted 34,000 people last year, half of whom were children.
• “We used to call them emergency food pantries,” said Glen Koenen, executive director of Circle of Concern in Valley Park, MO near St. Louis. “More and more often, it’s what families have to do every month or five or six months a year.”
• “Food is something we have a surplus of in this county,” the article quoted Bill Boling, executive director of the Atlanta Food Bank, as saying. “We don’t have a surplus of housing, health care, jobs, or automobiles for people to get to jobs. So, what often happens for families who are short of money is that they pay their rent, the power bill, put gas in the car, put shoes on the kids and go to the local food pantry to get food.”
Just before Thanksgiving, on November 23, 2004, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger released the results of its comprehensive annual survey of food pantries and soup kitchens, based on responses from 226 agencies. The report, titled “Empty Plates, Empty Pantries: Armies of Compassion Face More Hunger, Fewer Resources,” included the following findings:
• The number of people fed rose by an estimated nine percent over the previous year, when the increase was a huge 48 percent;
• 52 percent of agencies said they were feeding an increased number of working people, with 26 percent of all clients served in working families;
• A full 81 percent of agencies said they faced some increased demand for food over the year before, with 52 percent noting that demand had increased “greatly”;
• 69 percent of reporting agencies said they served more senior citizens; 62 percent served more homeless families; 71 percent helped more immigrants; and 81 percent assisted more families with children; and
• 72 percent of agencies responding were faith-based or religiously affiliated.
For additional details, visit: http://www.nyccah.org/.
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Foodlinks America is published 24 times a year by California Emergency Foodlink and distributed by Weinberg & Vauthier Consulting, 6412 CR 116, Burnet, Texas 78611; Zy Weinberg and Barbara Vauthier, Editors; email: bvauthier@281.com.

Washington Update
Monday, January 10, 2005

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