Let Justice Roll

A growing hunger
By Roy Wenzl
Wichita Eagle, 10/21/07

DESPITE A THRIVING ECONOMY, RISING COSTS ARE FORCING MORE PEOPLE TO LINE UP FOR FOOD AID

Food charities say they are seeing ominous numbers of hungry people this year. One culprit, they say, is the price of milk. So many poor people tried to get into the Lord's Diner line on Wednesday that when a rainstorm struck, eight people were left soaking outside, one of them an elderly woman on a motorized scooter. She sat stoically as rainwater poured off the bill of her fishing cap. The diner's clogged rain gutters poured double waterfalls at her feet, splashing as high as her knees.

Inside, volunteers scooped turkey, gravy and cornbread. The nearly 420 diners that night included children, elderly and disabled people, and people like Andrea Needham and Daniel Thomas, who have jobs but don't earn enough to feed their children through a week.

The hunger numbers

About 800 to 1,000 people have been lining up outside the Bread of Life food pantry every Tuesday this fall. The pantry usually doesn't see numbers like that until closer to Thanksgiving, said Donna Pinaire, the pantry's director.

From January through September, the pantry served 25,000 people, 3,500 more than in the same period last year.

United Methodist Open Door is serving 200 to 300 more families this year than last year, said Donna Volz, director of community services.

Food charities may be in trouble this year, said Brian Walker, president of the Kansas Food Bank. "I'm seeing numbers that disturb me. I'm seeing people surviving on very little, and I don't know how some of them do it."

Walker's food bank acquires tons of free or nearly free food from manufacturers, then ships it to hundreds of food pantries in 86 Kansas counties. Donations have not dropped, but demand has shot up. In July, August and September this year, he handed out 500,000 pounds more food than in the same three months last year.

The Lord's Diner set a new one-night record (600 people served) on Memorial Day, said executive director Wendy Glick. The diner has served more than 500 people on 26 nights between May 1 and Sept. 30. "And we're flirting with the number 600 more than once recently."

Catholic Charities fed 7,529 people in the first six months of this year, about 1,300 more than the same period last year.

The culprits for this spike in numbers, say the charities and at least one economic analyst, include the price of gas, the price of milk and the price of orange juice.

On Wednesday, when the charity's marketing director, Teresa Kunze, opened freezers at the pantry on North Topeka, she found several empty shelves. "And the guy we call the Hot Dog Man (a donor) had overstocked them recently because he was going to be out of town for a few days."

And the neediest month, November, is yet to come.

What's going on here

Why these numbers?

Aircraft companies have hired like mad. The Wichita Area Technical College and the Chamber of Commerce have pointed out for years that we have huge labor shortages in nursing, air conditioning repair and dozens of other fields as baby boomers retire.

The working poor often are not trained for those skilled jobs and can't afford the schooling or the day care. Still, overall employment, including for unskilled jobs, is good, relatively speaking: Only 13,236 people, or 4.1 percent, are unemployed in the Wichita area, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.

"We can't blame the economy," said Janet Harrah, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. "The local economy is going great."

But Harrah, an expert on population and economic trends, said that costs are another part of the picture. "The price of milk, price of orange juice, the cost of gasoline, we've got inflation with those items, and to a certain segment of the population, these are not luxury items. If the price of clothing goes up, you can wear that old dress. But if you've got kids, and you need to buy milk -- well, you need to buy milk."

Harrah's assessment dovetails with what Walker has seen, and with what people say while standing in line at the Lord's Diner and at Catholic Charities.

Many jobs in town don't pay as well as the aircraft companies. Many people don't have the money or the cars that can get them the skilled jobs touted in the labor shortages. "There are many people working hard at restaurant or service industry jobs that can't have a family and can't feed themselves on a wage like that," Walker said.

"Seeing milk go to nearly $4 a gallon is just a nuisance to those of us in the middle class," he said. "But to poor people, and employed people making $10 or $12 an hour, $4 milk is the difference between eating and not eating."

People picking up food agree.

"The minimum wage is what, $5.85 an hour?" said Freddy Davis, a 48-year-old roofer receiving a bag of food at Catholic Charities. "How can you even think about making it when the price of a pack of baloney is two, three dollars apiece?"

Andrea Needham, who showed up at the Lord's Diner on Wednesday with husband, Donn, and their two kids, said the family eats there two to three nights a week out of necessity, even though she's fully employed in tech services. The rising cost of milk and gas hit them hard, she said.

Daniel Thomas, a 24-year-old single father of two daughters, completed a 76-day stint in jail recently, for failure to appear in court. He didn't want to depend on handouts. He got a good job two weeks ago, making trusses. The job just isn't enough: On Wednesday, as he spooned cornbread to his 17-month-old daughter, Aliveah, he said most family meals consist of ramen noodles at home, and the Lord's Diner four nights a week. They go to pantries. The cost increases for milk, cereal and diapers "really got to us."

Who the poor are

The charities say few of these hungry people are lazy and looking for handouts. About one-third of the households served by the Kansas Food Bank have at least one employed member. Nearly 63 percent are white.

At least 2,700 of the people served during the last school year were children that schools across the state found were not getting much -- or anything-- to eat on weekends. The food bank sent backpacks home with them every Friday.

This year, Walker has already identified as many hungry children as he did in all of last year, and is worried about how many more he will find.

Nearly one in four families who eat at the Lord's Diner have one person employed.

Some critics of government say we need to raise the minimum wage. The Kansas Action Network, for example, plans to lobby the Wichita City Council soon to do that. The current federal minimum wage is $5.85; the current Kansas minimum wage is $2.65. About 27,000 working Kansans are paid below the federal minimum wage, according to the Kansas Department of Labor.

Businesses and the Chamber argue that raising the wage would hurt business, and in turn the workers. The Action Network argues that paying poor people more would actually benefit businesses, "because the poor would immediately spend the money on milk, rent and other necessities," said Heidi Zeller, organizer for the network's "Raise the wage" campaign.

Those poor who can't work often are desperate. Angel Marie Summers, who stood in line at Catholic Charities food pantry on Wednesday, is 22 and disabled due to periodic epileptic seizures. Were it not for Catholic Charities, other pantries, and food stamps, "I don't know how I would live."

Forty-four percent of the diner patrons have disabilities. Many are elderly. At dinner Wednesday night was one 6-year-old boy whom Glick, the Lord's Diner director, jokingly called "my boyfriend." He is being raised by his great-grandmother, both surviving on several hundred dollars a month from Social Security.

The Lord's Diner has changed recipes and menus to cut back. "We used to make a potato soup to die for," she said. "But it had cream in it, and the price of cream has gone up."

Contributing: Dan Voorhis of The Eagle
Reach Roy Wenzl at 316-268-6219 or rwenzl@wichitaeagle.com.