Food banks across the country are seeing a worrying trend: more people seeking food because their dollar doesn’t go as far.
Inflation was up to a 40-year high in June with the consumer price index rising 9.1%. The costs for food are pushing some to use credit cards and ask for help from charity programs such as food banks.
A family of four is spending nearly 40% more on food according to data from a Census Bureau estimate — $333.57 in June 2022 vs $239 the previous June. An additional 2 million people are relying on credit cards to meet their spending needs each week from just five months ago.
The inflation-based need is a new and scary direction for food bank operators who are coming off one of the longest and most enduring stretches in unemployment-based need in a generation.
“You know, when you've got people in need because of unemployment, that's one thing, but then when you've got people in need, because of employment, that's a scary space,” said Eric Cooper, president of the San Antonio Food Bank and board member of Feeding America.
The trend calls into question common logic and talking points for addressing poverty, which suggests employment is the best solution. But with unemployment hovering around 3% Cooper says people in his food lines are all employed — which even before the pandemic — has been largely the case for the past 20 years.
There are deeper, more systemic problems with poverty than just giving people food or getting them a job. He has been disheartened after advocating for years to push up people’s wages just to see that rise last year eclipsed by staggering jumps in costs.
“We had someone say they needed food, but couldn't afford gas to come get it,” said Cooper.
Cooper — whose food bank made national news during the pandemic for its massive food distributions — said summer’s are always hard as schools let out and families lose that midday meal for kids. But he still anticipated the numbers to decline further from the pandemic highs of feeding 120,000 people a week.
Their data shows that after an initial decline to 90,000 per week, the number has risen the past three months back up to 100,000. At their mass distribution Friday, nearly one in three had never used their service before. He attributed that to the change to more people coming to Texas for jobs.
Meanwhile in San Antonio the costs of housing, the taxing on sky high appraisals, the triple digit heat waves along with rising utility rates have scraped out the insides of people's wallets.
