Hours before a food pantry opens, people start lining up one by one. Their faces reveal their desire to be elsewhere, but their situation doesn’t permit it. The food they receive will hold them over for the next couple of days. During the past years, these lines keep getting longer as poverty levels increase.
From 2005 to 2009, 50.2 percent of the Austin metro population lived in neighborhoods with a 20 percent poverty rate, increasing to 54.6 percent from 2010 to 2014 according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis of U.S. census data.
As the need has grown, so have the Food Bank’s efforts. In 2005, the Food Bank distributed 18 million pounds of food to hungry families and helped serve 35,000 people a week. Last year, we distributed nearly 34 million pounds of food in a 21 county service area. Despite our best efforts, the Food Bank is still short of meeting demand by 30 percent.
To continue to provide relief for hungry families, in June the Food Bank is moving to a new 135,000 square foot facility that’s more than twice the size of the current warehouse and is capable of distributing up to 60 million pounds of food per year. With double the warehouse space for shelf-stable food, five times the refrigeration and freezer capacity, and a commercial production kitchen to cook meals and freeze produce, the distribution center will allow us to serve the growing need not only in Austin but in the surrounding areas as well, where the expanding number there facing hunger is an issue.
According to the report, there has also been an increase of 4.6 percent of the suburban population living in neighborhoods with a 20 percent poverty rate from the time period 2005 to 2009 to 2010 to 2014.
With the higher cost of living in Austin and lack of affordable housing, families are fleeing to the suburbs, as was the case for the Kravitsky family. With long waitlists for affordable housing, the family resorted to moving to the suburbs. Even then, they were lucky to secure the last apartment available in their affordable-housing apartment complex in Elgin, Texas.
Even after the move, the family still cannot afford food for everyone, but as long as their 8 and 5-year old have food in their stomachs, everything is fine, their mother Tailar Kravitsky said. To make this happen, the family relies on the Food Bank’s Kids Cafe program that provides after-school meals for children.
Last year, the Food Bank provided 87,000 meals to children at Kids Cafe sites, but this wasn’t enough. One in four Central Texas children is still at risk of hunger. Currently, the Food Bank buys meals from third-party vendors for Kids Cafe sites, but with the production kitchen in our new facility, the Food Bank will be able to drastically reduce these costs and reach more children in need.
In an effort to reach the outlying areas, the organization is already making changes. Within the last year, it has added four new mobile pantry sites bringing nutritious food to 37 distinct sites in Central Texas.
The capital campaign to fund the new facility will also provide for three new mobile pantry food trucks that will allow an additional two million pounds of food to be distributed to more than 147,000 individuals each year.
“For people without transportation and with no public transportation, it’s not always easy to access food and vegetables,” Williamson County resident Josephine said.
As poverty increases in Central Texas and food access decreases, the Food Bank is committed to reaching all of our clients in our service area. To better represent the growing community we serve, the Food Bank will change its name to Central Texas Food Bank in June.
“There are a lot of needy people and sometimes this is their only hope!” Food Bank client Elaine said.
