Food pantries and meal providers for the homeless in the D.C. area are expanding services to address a pandemic-era increase in families lacking consistent access to adequate nutrition.
Officials at the Capital Area Food Bank — which coordinates grocery donations to 400 social services in the region — told The Washington Times that they distributed 16.9 million meals in Northern Virginia in fiscal 2022. That was up from 9.2 million meals that the Lorton warehouse gave away in fiscal 2019.
The food bank broke ground Monday on a spacious storage and distribution center that will be more than twice as large as its current warehouse. Officials say the new facility is needed because more residents are struggling to afford groceries.
The one-year building project will demolish the current 14,000-square-foot warehouse and replace it with a 43,286-square facility that features expanded food storage and a new area for training volunteers.
“Food insecurity significantly increased in northern Virginia and the greater D.C. area during the pandemic,” said Cynthia Singiser, senior director of the Capital Area Food Bank. “To meet this challenge head on, we had to expand our space and align it with today and tomorrow’s needs.”
Nearly one-third of D.C.-area residents struggled to access food in 2021, according to the food bank’s most recent report. It cited rising rents, uncompetitive wages and an uneven economic recovery for an uptick from before the pandemic.
According to local charities that partner with the food bank, the end of emergency subsidies from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on March 1 has worsened the problem.
Haymarket Regional Food Pantry in Prince William County, Virginia, reports a 90% increase in new families asking for food since the beginning of the SNAP rollback. Starting April 1, the shelter added 55 appointments a week to meet the demand.
Closer to the White House, Capitol Hill has become a “food desert” for low-income families since Walmart closed its store on H Street NW in March, said Dan Kerns, executive director of the Father McKenna Center, which serves more than 1,100 people.
He said the number of people getting groceries from the food pantry next to Gonzaga High School rose from 16 to 23 households a day last month, and the number of homeless men eating cooked breakfasts and lunches at the center increased 40% over the past three to four months. On top of that, the cost of meat is up by 10% to 15% from before the pandemic.
“Food insecurity and uncertainty have increased significantly because of the inflation of grocery prices and reduced government benefits,” Mr. Kerns told The Times. “Everyone has been impacted by the cost of food, so we’ve had to ask some of the people who have supported us in the past for more.”
About 33.8 million adults in the United States lacked dependable access to adequate food and water in 2021, according to the most recent data that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on April 20.
The 33.8 million adults living in hunger in 2021 appeared to be more than double that of 2020, when the CDC estimated that 15 million people dwelled in the shadows of malnourishment and starvation.
But CDC statisticians said they could not compare 2021 to 2020, citing a redesign in the annual questionnaire dating from 2019.
The percentage of adults experiencing family food insecurity in 2021 was higher in large inner cities (6.4%) and rural areas (7.7%) than in large metropolitan suburbs (4.2%) and small- or medium-sized cities (5.8%), this year’s report found.
The CDC said food insecurity was highest among unmarried adults living with children under age 18 (9.8%) and lowest among married adults not living with children under age 18 (3.4%).
Other reports suggest rising food and rent prices have pushed more families toward homelessness, making it harder for social service agencies to keep them off the streets since the pandemic started.
A 2020 Government Accountability Office study found rent increases of $100 per month were associated with a 9% increase in homelessness.
In March, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers buying food in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area rose year-over-year by 5.8%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The price of shelter and other items minus food and energy rose by 1.9% over the same period.
Roughly 6,380 people in the nation’s capital are homeless, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has drawn fire from some advocates and politicians for bulldozing tent encampments over the past two years.
Fresh protein is the item most coveted by cash-strapped families this month, according to the food pantry at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. The church in Northeast distributes canned and refrigerated items during the last two Wednesdays of each month.
“People are asking for meat,” said pantry volunteer coordinator Elaine Schiller. “Obviously, tuna fish and canned chicken is OK, but they’re happier to get ham or hot dogs.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.