From The Chicago Tribune, 9/1/03:

Hunger has a new face

Ranks of those needing assistance increasingly include people with
jobs

By V. Dion Haynes
Tribune national correspondent


BEND, Ore. --

Despite working full time as a waitress at an International House of
Pancakes restaurant, Crystal Carter regularly must turn to charities
and generous friends to feed herself and her three small children.

Likewise, Leslie Ramaekers finds it difficult to stretch the wages
from her full-time auto-detailing job to buy enough food.

She often skips breakfast and lunch to ensure that her four children
can eat.

Randy Malone has it even worse.

Laid off 1 1/2 years ago, he has to use his sparse resources to feed
his two nieces and nephew, who live with him.

Forced to skip meals, Malone has lost 25 pounds.

"I don't normally eat breakfast or lunch. Sometimes for dinner I might
get a peanut butter sandwich or a piece of bread," said Malone, 42,
who was picking up a bag of free groceries from a food pantry in
northeast Portland one day this summer.

"I'd rather them eat it than me," he added, referring to the children,
age 7 to 12.

In a survey, 25 U.S. cities reported on average a 19 percent increase
in demand for emergency food assistance from 2001 to 2002.

Some city officials say Carter, Ramaekers and Malone represent the new
face of hunger in America.

Single moms affected

The ranks of the hungry more and more include single mothers stuck in
low-wage jobs, married couples who can't keep up with soaring housing
costs and able-bodied people who can't find jobs.

Their predicament forces them every month to grapple with vexing
trade-offs:

Pay the rent or child care?

Buy that prescription for a sick child or pay that overdue electric
bill?

Put gas in the car or food on the table?

"We're seeing Depression-era food lines in 21st Century America. . . .
This is the most food productive nation on the planet, and we should
not have hunger," said Doug O'Brien, vice president for policy and
research at Chicago-based America's Second Harvest, the umbrella
organization for the nation's food banks and the largest hunger relief
organization in the U.S.

The previous profile of a hungry person, O'Brien said, was "a
homeless, chronically unemployed, mentally ill substance abuser."

But by 2001, "we were as likely to see a single mother who's employed
as we would a homeless man," he added.

"Nationwide, 40 percent of the people we serve come from households
where at least one person is working."

Agriculture Department experts peg the number of hungry or "food
insecure" people at about 34 million, up from about 30 million in
1995.

Hunger and food insecurity are defined broadly--when people are forced
to skip a meal or cut back on what they eat because they lack money,
when people don't know where their next meal is coming from or when
people must visit a soup kitchen or food pantry for emergency
assistance.

Demand for emergency food rose dramatically from 2001 to 2002 in about
25 cities polled late last year by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Requests for food jumped 52 percent in Kansas City, 49 percent in
Miami, 28 percent in Chicago, 25 percent in Los Angeles, 14 percent in
Cleveland and 10 percent in New Orleans.

States step up outreach

The issue has been receiving attention in recent months.

Oregon, Wisconsin, Virginia and West Virginia have stepped up their
outreach to hungry people who might qualify for assistance from food
stamp programs.

And two bills have been introduced in Congress to expand the number of
children eligible for free school meal programs.

A study released in July by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at
Brandeis University suggested that hunger is related to the epidemic
of obesity.

The study said that low-income families "may consume low-cost foods
with relatively higher levels of calories per dollar to stave off
hunger" rather than more nutritious food when their resources run
short.

No state better exemplifies the crisis than Oregon, which has been
ranked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as No. 1 in hunger and
food insecurity.

Oregon, which prospered in the 1990s from the dot-com boom and has an
image as a recreation-friendly and environmentally conscious state,
hardly seems a candidate for hunger capital of the nation.

But the state, which also ranks at or near the top in unemployment,
has been grappling with an economic meltdown.

It has made drastic spending cuts for schools, health care, social
programs and courts to relieve a nearly $3 billion deficit.

As serious as the budget problems are, according to experts, the
current crisis is the product of a systemic shift as low-paying,
low-skill jobs in the service industry replaced high-paying, low-skill
jobs in the timber and fishing industries.

Bend, Ore., reflects that wage gap and economic metamorphosis.

For generations, this region was timber country, with an abundance of
family-run mills.

But from 1989 to 1997, jobs in the forest industry declined by 47
percent in central Oregon.

Now only one family-run mill is left in the region.

During the same time, dozens of golf courses, spas, mountain lake and
ski lodges and new housing developments sprang up, transforming
central Oregon into a resort and an upscale retirement area.

"A lot of people say it's going to be another Aspen, Colo.," said
Carter, the IHOP waitress, who often visits an area food pantry to
feed her two daughters and son.

"There's no middle class here," added Carter.

"Either you have money or you don't."

"Instead of making $17 an hour in a mill, the most people can get
around here [in service industry jobs] is around minimum wage," said
Sweet Pea Cole, a coordinator for the Central Oregon Community Action
Agency, where Carter gets her free food.

Advocates for the poor say Oregon officials largely were in denial
about the state's hunger problem--until this year.

When Gov. Ted Kulongoski took office in January, he made fighting
hunger a priority.

Kulongoski, a Democrat, is appearing in TV public service
announcements to raise awareness.

The governor also is calling for more affordable housing.

And he recently signed legislation to refurbish crumbling bridges and
highways, which would create 5,000 jobs annually for 10 years.

But some people struggling to put food on the table say the efforts
will do little to help them.

"There has to be some way of training people, people who are stuck and
struggling and want to do something with their lives," said Ramaekers,
28, of Tualatin, Ore., the auto-detail worker and mother of four who
skips meals and frequents food banks.

"You're working harder but always staying in the same place."

_______________________________________________________

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

Georgie W. Dumwit -- Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan.
27, 2000

Harry