by Lew Morrissey

With unemployment rampant and family incomes shrinking, Charlotte County is in the midst of a food crisis. While certainly not on the order of some Third- World country, getting enough nutritious food to eat is proving to be a challenge for a growing number of jobless and working poor families and individuals from Punta Gorda to Englewood.

The number of households receiving food stamps in Charlotte County has soared more than 55 percent in the past year, according to the Florida Department of Children and Families. At the end of May, 4,207 families — 8,435 men, women and children — depended on the vouchers to put food on the table. A year earlier, 5,394 individuals depended on them.

“That’s a pretty dramatic increase,” said Terry Field, communications director for the department’s Suncoast region. “So many are working poor.”

Food stamps alone aren’t meeting the need. They don’t always carry a family through until the next monthly vouchers arrive, either because of poor food budgeting or the amount allotted is insufficient. And many eligible people simply won’t or can’t fathom the application process. The problem is exacerbated over the summer while school is out and needy children can’t benefit from subsidized school breakfast and lunch programs.

Filling the Gap

Helping to fill the gap are more than 20 food pantries throughout the county, most of them church-affiliated. Here, the homeless, single mothers, whole families reduced to one income and workers whose hours have been slashed gather to collect free bags of canned goods, pasta, juices, cookies and other foodstuffs, laundry detergents and toiletries. A few pantries offer frozen meats.

Donations from churches, individuals and annual food drives, such as those sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service and Boy Scouts, provide much of the pantries’ stock. However, the biggest supplier is the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida in Fort Myers, named after the late musician who advocated for world hunger relief. With 32,000 square feet of warehouse space, Harry Chapin stores donated foodstuffs from a variety of sources, including America’s Second Harvest, the national food bank network; regional and local drives; the food industry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s commodities program. It provides food on demand to 130 community agencies in five counties, including the majority of food pantries in Charlotte County. It charges a minimal handling fee for certain non-perishable items, which account for less than a third of the food it distributes.

“The poor economy has hit Charlotte the worst, primarilydue to the falloff in construction there,” said Al Brislain, Harry Chapin’s director. “From January through March alone, there was a 70 percent increase in clients at the county’s food pantries. I’ve never seen anything like that in my 30 years in food banking.”

In the first five months of this year, Harry Chapin provided 400,349 pounds of food to its Charlotte member agencies. That’s equivalent to 320,000 meals, Brislain said. He calls food pantries “emergency food suppliers” and the volunteers who staff them “hometown heroes.”

One of Chapin’s biggest customers in the county is St. Vincent De Paul in Punta Gorda. “We’re providing over a ton of food a week on average and averaging 730 individuals a month served, many of them children,” said Dennis Creighton, the charity’s food pantry coordinator. “We served 31 percent more people in the first five months of this year than in the same period in 2007.”

Surviving the Economic Slowdown

One of those recipients is Vivian, 56, who visits St. Vincent’s every month to supplement her food stamps. Vivian lives with a family of five — a mother, father and three kids — but says they barely have enough food for themselves, let alone her. She said the mother is the only one working regularly. The father is a commercial fisherman, “but it’s hit or miss.” Vivian does housework for the family to help out and pay them for boarding her.

Another recipient is Doug, 62, a Vietnam veteran and laid-off electrician, who says the food he gets from St. Vincent’s lasts up to three-and-a-half weeks. He supplements it with groceries from the Bread of Life Mission pantry in Punta Gorda. “I’d starve to death if not for these places,” he said. “I weigh 127 pounds today. I weighed 168 two years ago.”

Across the county, Jane, 45, recently came to Helping Hand in Englewood, picking up food for her and her boyfriend, who was laid off from his construction job and whose unemployment benefits have run out. Jane does part-time homecare work and has applied for food stamps. “It’s very depressing,” she said of the couple’s plight.

Helping Hand, sponsored by 14 area churches, is run by Victoria Rice, a savvy social work veteran who calls food pantries band-aids. “We supplement seniors on fixed incomes and folks on food stamps and provide things food stamps can’t buy, like toiletries and laundry items,” she said.

While some pantries enforce few if any eligibility requirements, Helping Hand requires clients to show an official photo ID and proof of a Social Security number. “We check addresses to ensure the client is from our service area and to discourage those who would abuse the system” by circulating among several pantries and hoarding food, Rice said. “We have a stewardship responsibility to our benefactors that the people we help are qualified.”

Helping Hand asks people to apply for food stamps before regularly visiting the food pantry. “And we want folks to spend that [food stamp] money wisely before we give them food,” she said, adding “we find young people today don’t know how to cook!”

As at several food pantries surveyed, Rice said “we’re seeing a lot of people who were secure in their jobs until being laid off due to the economic slowdown — construction jobs, waitresses, realtors, people with college degrees, people for whom unemployment benefits are not enough to live on.” In the first quarter of 2008, the charity helped nearly 1,000 individuals in Charlotte and Sarasota counties, compared to 530 in the same period last year.

A number of Charlotte food pantries operate in small, cramped quarters and are not always easy to find. Good Samaritans of Charlotte County, supported by several area churches, has had to relocate four times since Hurricane Charley devastated its long-time facility on Nesbit Street. It’s now located in a one-room office in a building across East Marion Avenue from the Justice Center in Punta Gorda.

Still, desperation recently led Keira, a laid-off administrative assistant from Port Charlotte, to find Good Samaritans, seekingfood for herself and her two teenage sons. “I’m looking for work,” she said. “I pray to God to take care of me and my boys.” Rose Walters, Good Samaritan’s executive director, said the number of people coming to her charity for food began to rise in mid-2007. “We were averaging 20 client families on average a week then, but now it’s more than 30 and still rising,” she said. To keep up with the demand, Walters said her board was thinking of affiliating with Harry Chapin.

Critical Supply Levels

But even for Harry Chapin, demand is outstripping supply.“We are really concerned as we enter the fall months,” Brislain said. Major food drives provide a third of Harry Chapin’s supplies, he said, and “the spring Post Office drive used to carry us into October, when [a Publix supermarket] food drive begins. Last year we ran out [of sufficient supplies] in August, and I fear that will happen again. Last fall was horrendous; several food pantries closed down.”

Creighton at St. Vincent in Punta Gorda said he thinks his usually well-stocked pantry will be forced to go from providing five days worth of food per client “to three and maybe even two days before the year is up.”

Brislain said Harry Chapin is promoting a faith food drive in southwest Florida the first weekend after Labor Day. “We don’t care if the churches or church schools give to us or to the pantries directly, but it’s critical that we increase supply.”

Local Food Pantries

In these times of economic troubles, food pantries and those people they serve are often the first victims. If you are fortunate enough to have the extra time or resources, please consider donating your time, food or money to one of Charlotte County’s many food pantries. For more information on how you can donate to Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, visit www.theharrychapinfoodbank.org or call (239) 334-7007. The United Way of Charlotte County also accepts donations for the Harry Chapin Food Bank and Good Samaritans of Charlotte County. Visit www.unitedwayccfl.org or call (941) 627-3539. You may also donate directly to any of the following pantries.