By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews
About 18 months ago, the Yachats Food Pantry found itself with more groceries than clients.
“If you’re hungry, please come,” urged the pantry leader, reminding people of the free food available three days a week.
How things have changed.
Now, like food banks across Lincoln County, Oregon and the nation, the pantry operated out of Yachats Community Presbyterian Church is pressed for funds and food to meet demand — mostly from the working poor pushed by economics to join the line for food.
“They’re working, but at low-paying jobs, and they just run out of food,” says Pam Luderitz of Yachats, a church elder who heads the pantry. “Now it’s whole families who are coming in. A mom will say, ‘After I pay my bills, there’s not much left for food.’ They’re a paycheck away from being unhoused.”
While 8-10 of Yachats’ unhoused residents are regular clients at the pantry, she says, “All the rest are working poor.”
The numbers tell the story.
In January 2021, the pantry served 161 people. Last month, 293 individuals lined up at the food pantry window just inside the church entrance on West Sixth Street. The pantry – it’s a community service available to all — is open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Wednesday evenings from 5-7.
“Some days, we get 41 people and their families,” says Luderitz.
That might be manageable if food costs weren’t soaring.
“In terms of cost, we’re one-and-a-half times up,” from last spring, said Jim Finlayson, a church member who does most of the pantry shopping. Finlayson used to spend $600-800 each week to augment food donations to the pantry. Now the bill goes up to as much as $900.
A statewide issue
If food banks are a barometer of the financial stress in a community, the pressure now reads almost as high as it did during the first year of the pandemic, when COVID-related closures led to massive layoffs and tanked the national economy.
Susannah Morgan, chief executive officer of the Oregon Food Bank, the state’s primary hunger relief organization, estimates 1.5 million people will have visited the state’s food banks and pantries by the end of the year. That total is only slightly lower than the 1.7 million people who visited in 2020.
In 2021, demand for food assistance fell to 1.2 million people. Researchers and food bank officials credited the decrease to myriad forms of federal relief deployed during the pandemic, including the expansion of the child tax credit, stimulus payments, universal school meals and the expansion of rental and food assistance programs.
By mid-2022, many of those programs had ended, even as prices for all kinds of goods shot up. More families again turned to food banks to ensure they could put food on the table.
The Oregon Food Bank network includes Waldport Food Share and Food Share of Lincoln County, but not the Yachats Food Pantry, which depends entirely on donations.
Prior to the pandemic, Oregon Food Bank’s tab for provisions was about $600,000. In 2022, Morgan said, that bill has soared to $10 million, Morgan said, and only because of state and federal emergency funds was it able to spend that amount of money.
Demand up in Waldport
Closer to home, Waldport Food Share is in similar straits.
“The food we can get from Oregon Food Bank and Food Share of Lincoln County has reduced a bit over the past year” due to availability and cost, said manager Linda Ballas, who has had to supplement food supplies with purchases.
Donations help, too, including baked goods from Beachside Buzz, Seal Rock Bakery, Breadworks in Yachats, and Grocery Outlet in Newport.
Demand is also up sharply for the Waldport-based organization — from 382 people served in November 2021 to 618 individuals this past November. The amount of food distributed grew 33 percent in those two comparison months: from 15,000 to 20,000 pounds.
“We’re seeing a lot of new people, and so many of them are working poor; it’s been really noticeable lately,” Ballas says.
Waldport Food Share is an all-volunteer effort, distributing food from 12:30-2:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays from its headquarters at 3710 Crestline Drive, adjacent to South Lincoln Resources. People can collect free groceries once a week.
South Lincoln Resources, which has been distributing Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets for 39 years, has also seen demand grow — an additional 80 families getting food deliveries last weekend.
Who’s in need of help
Food Share of Lincoln County, based in Newport, is one of 21 regional food banks operating under Oregon Food Bank, charged with collecting and distributing food to the various agencies that provide services.
Nancy Mitchell has been executive director of Newport-based Food Share of Lincoln County for 25 years and has seen the change in the types of people turning to food banks — along with the same big increases in demand and cost that are at work elsewhere.
“A lot of people still think it’s just the homeless” seeking food, but “that’s not the case,” she says. Much of the demand comes from seasonal workers in the hospitality and fishing industries, and senior citizens.
“In our community, we have the hospitality industry where people work all summer, and then work drops,” Mitchell says. “Then we have our fishing families — fishermen, deck hands, processors — they don’t get paid ‘til they get the first load of crab in. And then we have seniors, on a fixed income,” coping with cost of living and health issues. “We do a lot of work providing for seniors.”
Even though the need is real, Mitchell believes some people still feel a “degree of shame” about using a food bank.
“Showing up at a food pantry is a physical thing,” she says. “You’re in line … this is a small town … what happens if you see your children’s teacher, or a neighbor? It’s difficult.”
Many of the group’s clients say “’We’ve never had to use a food pantry before,’” says Mitchell, who had her own struggles as a single mother of three teenaged daughters. A woman in a similar position recently donated a few dollars along with a note of thanks. “It was just a few bucks, but it was worth $1,000 because of what she expressed.”
FSLC’s network of pantries and hot meal sites stretches from Newport to Lincoln City to Depoe Bay. In July, August and September of 2021, the pantries served some 1,000 households. For the same period in 2022, the number jumped to more than 1,500.
“How many …?”
While some publicly-supported food banks are technically supposed to collect residency proof (a utility bill or rent receipt), in practice none will turn away a hungry client.
At the Yachats Food Pantry, all that’s ever asked is a question: “How many people are you shopping for today?”
“For many of these people, it’s a choice between paying the electric bill and food; it’s one or the other,” says Luderitz.
“The very hesitation that some of our clients show says a lot,” says Finlayson. “They might take just enough to get by for a day or so, and we ask ‘What about tomorrow and the rest of the week?’ We actually have to prompt them, often.”
Luderitz recalls one man who came in looking only for food for his dog. “How about you?” she asked, and bagged some groceries for him.
Many of those groceries come from direct donations, especially from Newport’s Grocery Outlet. Store owner Donna McCrea “has helped us tremendously,” says Finlayson, by donating frozen meat and poultry that’s just past the “sell by” date. Thanks to a recent donation of $8,000, those goods will soon be stored in a big, upright freezer, twice the size of the upright in place at the church.
In addition to food, “If someone comes in needing clothing or shoes, we give them a $25 voucher for The Lions Club Thrift Store,” says Finlayson. Some of that clothing — gloves and hats — is knitted by a pantry client as a way of giving back.
While thanking people who donate money, food, supplies and their time to volunteer, Finlayson and Luderitz have a single message for those in need: “We’re here. We have food and some necessities. We just want to help.”
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
Where to get help:
- Yachats Food Pantry, inside Yachats Community Presbyterian Church: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 5-7 p.m. Wednesdays. Main number: 541-547-3400. Food and/or cash can be donated most days. Make out donation checks to Yachats Community Presbyterian Church; note “Food Pantry” in memo line. Address: P.O. Box 285, Yachats, Ore., 97498.
- Waldport Food Share, 3710 Crestline Drive, Waldport: Open 12:30-3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Phone 541-270-7869. Food can be donated 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Make checks to Waldport Food Share, P.O. Box 2231, Waldport, Ore., 97394. Or, go to its website.
- Food Share of Lincoln County, 535 N.E. First St., Newport. Open 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Phone 541-265-8578. To donate, visit the website, or send a check to Food Share of Lincoln County, 535 N.E. First St., Newport, Ore., 97365. Cash donations accepted during business hours.
- Waldport Community Presbyterian Church, 485 Bay St., Waldport. Offers a free breakfast and food boxes to anyone beginning at 9:30 a.m. every Saturday.