Oregon officials celebrated the state’s 100th birthday in 1959 by adding the phrase “Pacific Wonderland” to license plates. It made a nostalgic comeback in 2009 when Oregon turned 150.
The slogan rings true for the tourism industry along the Oregon Coast.
According to the Oregon Tourism Commission, coastal tourism had a total economic impact of $14.3 billion in 2024.
But not everyone shares in the abundance.
The coast may be a nice place to visit, but many people who live in Oregon’s Pacific Wonderland wonder how they are going to feed themselves and their families.
One of them is a single mother in Toledo, Oregon, trying to raise her daughters on a working-class income. They were lucky, she told officials at Food Share of Lincoln County.
“My daughters and I never went to bed hungry by the grace of God and organizations like yours,” she wrote in a Christmas card. “No one in this rich country should go to bed or wake up hungry.”
Another mother wrote her gratitude on a paper plate.
“If not for this program, my 9-year-old would not be able to eat at the end of the month,” she said.
Grim arithmetic
Along the Oregon Coast, where privilege goes to play, an average of nearly 20% of residents live in poverty.
At least 18% of Coos County residents live in poverty, according to numbers from the Oregon Health Authority. In Lincoln County, the poverty rate is 18.4%.
While 80% of the population falls outside the federal definition of poverty, a study conducted by United Way estimates roughly half the population of the coast experienced financial hardship in 2023.
United Way’s ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) study put the financial hardship rate for all Oregonians at 42%, with coastal communities rating even higher.
The study defined hardship to include people living above the federal poverty level but without the income to afford a basic household survival budget.
City on the edge
Paul Addis, the reference librarian at the Coos County Public Library, hardly needs statistics to tell him his community is in distress. He sees the people behind the numbers.
Everything is cyclical at the coast, Addis told Street Roots. When the tourists leave after Labor Day, they take all that largesse with them.
The people who fish and farm live by the seasons and the weather. While that’s true for the food industry everywhere, the coast is dotted with small communities that lack the economic diversity of larger municipalities.
Coos Bay, with 16,000 residents, is the largest city on the Oregon Coast. It’s also one of the most economically depressed — never having recovered from the decline of the timber industry.
Addis said the city depends almost entirely on farming, fishing, retail and tourism. And tourism is limited due to the city’s relative isolation along the southern coast.
“A lot of people will come here, thinking they’re going to the California Coast,” he said. “They don’t realize they’re going to rural Oregon. People will move here from California and be in shock about how poor the people are.”
Books, with a side of broccoli
To respond to local hunger, Addis used grant money to bring a refrigerator into the library in November of 2022 and stock it with fresh fruit and vegetables.
A grant from the American Library Association in 2022 funded community conversations around food.
“People had conversations about healthy meals and how we can decrease food insecurity and increase food education,” Addis said.
Conversations about nutrition were initially aimed at high school students, he said, but it soon became apparent that was the wrong demographic.
“Kids don’t know what they’re parents are preparing for dinner,” said Addis.
Organizers decided the best way to reach people with nutritional education and food was to start a food pantry at the library.
“If we put one in the library, people would be able to access it until 6 p.m. six days a week, and everybody in the community who walks in the door is eligible,” Addis said.
The food comes from South Coast Food Share as well as a local nonprofit called the Beet Food System.
Beet Food System organizers augment what the library gets from the food share by paying some of the local farmers during the growing season to get fresh, local produce in the fridge.
“A lot of people in the community have told us that since we brought the fridge to the community, the quality of their health has just gone through the roof,” Addis said. “Their doctors are happy because these patients are lowering their cholesterol. They’re lowering their blood pressure. They’re eating fruits and vegetables every meal where they used to go a day or two without eating any produce.”
Fast food culture
Many of the community’s nutritional problems relate to the nature of Coos Bay itself, he added.
“We have people doing hard work sometimes six, seven days a week,” said Addis. “All they have time to do is pick up fast food on the way home. Doing things like what we’re doing here really helps. Now when people come to get books, they can get healthy food on their way out of the library.”
The Waterfall Clinic — with locations in Marshfield, North Bend and Coos Bay — also has refrigerators for people in Coos, Curry and Douglas counties.
“Anyone can be a patient there and sign up for the produce,” Addis said. “People can get health care and come home with healthy food.”
Needs Trumped
While Addis has many partners helping him feed hungry people, the Trump administration isn’t one of them. President Donald Trump announced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits would end in November in response to the government shutdown.
The government shutdown ended, and due to legal rulings against the administration and the defiance of public officials like Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, SNAP benefits resumed.
Nonetheless, Addis said the initial suspension sent a shiver through the food distribution system for people living on the edge of Oregon.
“When the government cuts started this year, we had a week or two where South Coast Food Share had almost nothing,” he said. “Not only did Food Share scramble to make things happen here, so did organizations like mine and other local organizations. We’ve just made it happen.”
Between working with local groups and the Oregon Food Bank, local pantries were low on produce for more than a month.
“We had other avenues we were exploring at that time,” Addis said. “We were never out of produce. We just didn’t have as many options.”
Oregon Food Share is the nexus of the distribution system. It provides food and resources to regional partners such as South County Food Share who, in turn, supply grassroots-level pantries.
Big, beautiful mess
Another such regional partner is Food Share of Lincoln County.
Executive Director Nancy Mitchell said the SNAP disruption had everyone scrambling.
“I heard from pantries that their demand really spiked the first week or so due to the SNAP disruption,” Mitchell told Street Roots. “After the SNAP cards were restored, then the pantries levelled out at what we consider to be normal levels which are still busy this time of year.”
However, she said problems with the federal government are far from over. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is coming, and she fears it could result in One Fine Mess.
Tremors from the bill will start being felt along the coast next month, she said.
“That’s definitely going to affect people’s ability to access enough food for their families.”
Under the bill, people considered by the government to be “able-bodied” will be required to work or volunteer at least 80 hours a month to receive benefits.
For one thing, Mitchell said, that regulation is insulting. “Many of the able-bodied people on SNAP are already working,” she said.
The regulation also demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how people work, she added — especially in regions like the Oregon Coast.
“There’s often delays in when fishermen can actually get their paychecks, depending on when they can get out on the ocean and start getting their product,” said Mitchell. “There’s a whole set of logistics that I’m not sure how that’s going to play out.”
The Trump administration already betrayed its ignorance of life on the Oregon Coast when it attempted to reassign a Coast Guard helicopter in Newport last month for immigration raids.
Crabbing season just began on the coast, and the helicopter is needed for rescue operations on what has traditionally been a dangerous occupation. Although a federal judge ordered administration officials to return the helicopter, the incident left a bad impression on many coastal residents.
Trump clearly doesn’t understand how things work on the ground level, Mitchell said.
If people have to work or volunteer for their food, where are they going to be placed? The small towns of the coast have finite work and volunteer opportunities.
“You just don’t plug people in willy-nilly,” Mitchell said. “Especially in the workforce, obviously, there’s training involved and that sort of thing.”
Rigors of age
Then there are the aging food recipients.
“Retirement hit us hard, and we’re really hurting without your help,” one couple wrote to Mitchell.
The bill makes some exceptions for the elderly, but a lot of people find themselves in between work and retirement, Mitchell said.
“If we’re talking about people who are getting up there in years who are still considered able-bodied, how do they figure out how to work or volunteer 80 hours a month?”
The president and federal lawmakers haven’t thought these factors out, Mitchell said, leaving the job to people like her.
“I’m trying to figure out how all that is going to work.”
Volunteering is not as easy as it sounds, she added.
“In our communities, that would be challenging,” Mitchell said. “Even when we take on volunteers, there’s a little bit of orientation and training involved. I’m wondering if there’s going to be a big rush of people.”
The last open space
Food Share of Lincoln County serves 23 individual food banks and pantries.
Volunteers also take surplus food to low-income apartment complexes.
“That’s a nice model because the food gets delivered to where people live,” Mitchell said. “So that removes transportation and child-care barriers.”
She added she also likes pantries at libraries like the one in Coos Bay.
“That’s a universal place for people to go,” she said. “Sometimes people who are living on the margins will go to a library to either get out from the weather or sit down and read a magazine. It’s a good model for additional access to food.”
Addis said he loves libraries as one of the last truly open spaces in society.
“That’s one of the reasons that I work in public librarianship,” he said. “It is one of the last of those democratic institutions. One thing I can feel good about at the end of the day is that we are still practicing democracy in one place.”
Defying big ag
Expanding democracy, at least in the food industry, is one of the goals of the Central Coast Food Web.
Now in its third year, the Newport-based nonprofit received grant funding through the Roundhouse Foundation in Sisters to process and distribute surplus salmon and other commodities.
Central Coast Food Web’s facilities provide shared space and equipment at low risk and low cost to seafood and farm businesses to process, package and store their products.
The first shared-use facility of its kind on the coast, the Yaquina Lab, makes it economically viable to directly market agricultural and seafood products both locally and regionally.
“There’s not a lot of space on the Oregon Coast for people to independently process their seafood,” Madelyn Hoefer, the organization’s community foods and market coordinator, told Street Roots. “They’re pretty much stuck going to these multinational seafood processors and not getting a great price. That was the big need. That’s how we started.”
The organization pays for picking up the fish and getting them cleaned and vacuum-sealed.
The Food Web provided 9,482 four-ounce servings of fish to rural and low-income households. That includes 6,780 servings through Lincoln County Food Share and 2,702 servings through the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
Often overlooked
In other numbers, Addis’ food pantry served 5,569 individuals and 2,162 households in July.
“And that’s just one month,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Coastal residents are far from alone as they face food insecurity. An estimated 530,000 Oregonians face food insecurity each year, according to a 2024 report from Oregon State University Policy Analysis Lab. This represents almost 13% of Oregon’s population.
The Oregon Food Bank reported a 31% increase in visits in 2024, equating to 2.5 million people visiting 21 regional food banks and more than 1,200 local food programs across the state.
Still, Addis said, the Oregon Coast tends to get overlooked. Portland and the Willamette Valley tend to get the most attention when homelessness and hunger are discussed.
“When aid is supplied statewide, it takes a while to get to us,” he said. “We’re often the last to see things happen.”
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This article appears in December 17, 2025.