Demand for food aid spiked after cutback in government benefits early this year 

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news 

Volunteers packed up their belongings and dwindled out as a soft smattering of rain dampened boxes of lettuce, apples and potatoes still partially full on the patio outside the Ashland Community Food Bank as it closed for the day. The boxes typically would be empty by day’s end, but, along with boxes, weather can dampen usually consistent turnout, explained Amey Broeker, executive director of the food bank. 

When the doors open at 9:30 a.m., there are always people waiting in a ticketed queue to “shop,” she said. 

Last March the food bank saw a 140% spike in demand. At the same moment Supplemental Nutritional Aid Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) benefits were reduced, many COVID protection programs such as eviction protection ended. 

“Once those SNAP benefits went away, it was night and day. … At the same time food inflation started happening and gas prices skyrocketed and housing prices here went up. It was a lot of influences,” she said.  “We saw an immediate spike that just kept going up. We have continued to see a climb this year — not at that rate but we have continued to see a climb.” 

The food bank serves people from Ashland and Talent, 90% of whom are housed, Broeker said. The average household size is 2.5, though some are as large as eight and even a household of just one can find sustaining a household deceptively on a singular, often fixed, income. 

United Way’s ALICE category of low income — Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed — can be applied to 44% of Ashland households and 54% of Talent’s. 

“We have a very affluent town, and we have a lot of income disparity. … We consider ourselves a line item in people’s budget that makes sure that they can afford healthcare, that they can pay rent, they can get their car fixed, they can put gas in the tank, they can afford childcare, they can show up to work,” she said. 

Broeker shared a note of gratitude submitted anonymously by a recent visitor to the food bank: 

“Mine isn’t a story that you’ve never heard, we are just two older people on fixed incomes that do not keep pace with inflation. We are thankful for what we have and know that God provides, but the last few months have been hard with trying to buy healthy food and pay our bills too. … Your kindnesses made all the difference. I was treated with dignity and human kindness and caring which translate into love of fellow man.” 

The Ashland Community Food Bank has been serving locals in need for more than 50 years. When it first began, the then-Ashland Emergency Food Bank was operated by a group of faith-based organizations trying to meet an obvious need with almost clandestine tactics. 

“There was a hotline, there was a closet where some food was kept and when somebody called, a church member would get some groceries and go meet the person in the Safeway parking lot,” she said. 

Now, the community food bank is available five days a week with shelves stocked with typical staples such as canned tomatoes — organic and otherwise — cereal, pasta and, on a recent day, one lonely remaining can of Amy’s soup. To ensure dignity for those using the nonprofit, visitors are allowed to “shop” through the aisles of dry goods, a small refrigerated section with meat, some dairy and a selection of produce on the back patio. 

Every grocery store in Ashland donates close-to-expiration-date products, with nonprofit Food Angels dropping off deliveries of food every day, Broeker said. The Ashland Community Food Bank sources its stock from these donations, the Ashland Food Project’s Green Bag program and through shopping at Food For Less. 

The Green Bag program brings in around 30,000 pounds of food every other month. Shopping trips to Food for Less often yield around 1,000 pounds of food with an annual expenditure that is expected hit $240,000 this year. Grocery donations combined with other resources allow the bank to answer the demand for roughly 60,000 pounds of food every month, Broeker said. 

The Green Bag program ensures “variety we wouldn’t buy and quality we can’t afford,” while shopping for food with donated cash enables some stability. 

“There’s a juggling act between what people would ideally like and feeding as many people as come through our door. I mean, if we could only have Amy’s soup on the shelf, everybody would love that,” Broeker said. 

The food bank was once able to rely predominantly on the Green Bag program. Prior to the pandemic, the roughly 20,000 pounds donated met demand. But COVID changed everything. 

“In the early days, we had no idea how it was transmitted and nobody wanted to touch anything. What had been our normal source of food disintegrated. … the amount of food that came to our doors went down significantly, but cash went up significantly,” she said. 

The increase in donations led to a relative surplus of food and the bank allowed guests to shop twice a month instead of only once. Those without a home are allowed to shop four times per month for smaller amounts due to their unique lifestyle constraints. 

Then the spike of last March came. 

“You don’t take something away from people who need it, so we’re now giving away twice as much food as we were before COVID, partially because we set this new standard that we didn’t want to take away,” Broeker said. 

The 60,000 pounds of food every month go mostly to those directly shopping at the food bank, but also to little satellite pantries around Ashland, such as at the library, Southern Oregon University, outside First Presbyterian Church and at the Ashland Senior Center. 

Around 200 pounds are given to Ashland Middle School and Ashland High School weekly. Uncle Food’s Diner and Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice prepared meals can also source materials from the food bank. 

The food bank helps ACCESS stock backpacks for children with food insecurity. Broeker estimated roughly 80 backpacks went home with students per week this year. 

The nonprofit remains independent from ACCESS in order to operate its auxiliary pantries and receive donations from grocery stores. The bank has also eschewed federal dollars and instead is “extremely dependent on local donors,” she said. 

With only 2.5 full-time employees, the food bank is also run on volunteer labor, Broeker said, with a voluminous rack of hanging name tags offering a visual clue to the roughly 80 people who weekly donate their time.  Broeker praised the volunteers as “fun, generous, reliable, easy going. Very lovely group of people.

“I can’t tell you how many friendships I’ve seen formed here. … We see clients weave community here as well. We see the person who comes for the first time and thought they would never need to use a food bank, and then they see the person who has been coming who lives a half a block away from them,” she said. 

Volunteers can also become the singular reliable friendly interaction for shoppers fighting loneliness alongside food insecurity. Others come in evidently unwell with mental or physical illness, substance abuse or the long term PTSD of long-term homelessness, Broeker said. 

“We do have a lot of people show up at our doors that are fighting for their lives. That can be because they’re freezing cold and they’re wet and they’re hungry. It can be because they’ve been battling schizophrenia forever and they can’t afford their medication and they went off their medication and now they actually don’t know what to do,” she said. 

A trauma-informed care training for volunteers and staff began earlier this year and will pick up again in the new year, she said. But most of the time, shoppers are grateful, relieved or simply emotional. 

“Sometimes people just break down at the door their first time because they can feel a tremendous amount of shame about just stepping in. That’s just heartbreaking. We don’t care why you’re here. …. We care that you’re taken care of, our community cares that you’re being taken care of,” Broeker said. 

While the word “community” has become a buzzword, Broeker was proud to say the Ashland Community Food Bank’s over five decades has been dependent on the concept of shared human support. 

“We’re here for our community because of our community. Community’s become, like, this word, you know? We’ve been around for 52 years and it’s been volunteer supported, community funded — it is the epitome of community.” 

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].