Faced with a surge in food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the food bank has shifted its focus to systemic issues at the root of the hunger crisis
As Oregon emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing remains a constant since long before it began: Low-income Oregonians are going hungry.
Over the course of the pandemic, the Oregon Food Bank has ridden a wave of increased demand for food assistance throughout its network of 1,400 food assistance sites and 21 regional food banks and warehouses. Oregon Food Bank estimates 860,000 Oregonians relied on its network for food assistance each year prior to 2020. In the economic fallout of the pandemic, Oregon State University estimates that an additional half million people or more have already — or soon will be — turning to food pantries for the first time.
That has put pressure not only on food supplies but human resources. Early into the coronavirus crisis, the state fortified the Oregon Food Bank with $8 million in additional funding for food and related needs, but social distancing meant that even as the lines grew longer for food, far fewer people were available to get it into their hands.
Today, there is light at the end of the tunnel in terms of COVID-19, but families are still recovering from its economic impact.
Street Roots spoke with Susannah Morgan, the food bank’s CEO, about how the organization has weathered the pandemic and how, she said, the “lens of hunger allows us to talk about poverty, economic injustice, racial injustice, access to health care and mental services that lead to hunger.”
Karina Dwijayanti: Aside from the direct effect of the pandemic, what are the major challenges the Oregon Food Bank faces?
Susannah Morgan: Before the pandemic hit, our community was suffering. Roughly 1 in 10 Oregonians were food insecure. Today, that number is closer to 1 in 5, which is staggering. The biggest challenge we face revolves around changing how food banking is done. We can’t solve hunger with simply more food.
The issue is fundamentally not about food; it lies within the lack of equitable systems. Before the pandemic, I usually ask our neighbors who are experiencing houselesness about food insecurity and whether they know where to get food. Universally, they said that they know where to get food, and I thought, ‘Our job here is done.’ But that wasn’t solving the underlying needs for housing, mental health care, elimination of criminalization for small scale drugs, those sort of things that lead to living in the streets. So, we’ve got to think about equitable systems.
What we have been doing at the Oregon Food Bank is thinking about how we use what we have to build a movement that advocates for different systems that will really get to the roots of hunger. This includes systematic racism. We see the data that tells us hunger disproportionately affects our Black and Indigenous and people of color communities. It disproportionately affects migrant and immigrant communities, trans communities, single mothers and parents.
Dwijayanti: Have donations been affected by the pandemic?
Morgan: In good ways and challenging ways, our communities have come together in incredible ways to meet this crisis head on. In 2020, the Oregon Food Bank welcomed more than 17,000 new financial donors to help us continue to meet this need.
We also were able to meet local farmers, producers and partners to step up with millions of meals. Our partners in the state and federal governments invested more than $11 million in emergency food assistance over the past year.
Dwijayanti: Has the number of volunteers been reduced significantly since the pandemic?
Morgan: The absolute number of volunteers have been brought down. Before the pandemic at Oregon Food Bank we saw 40,000 different individuals coming into our facilities in shifts of 100 people at a time. Now we cut back to 10 people at a time for the safety guidelines, so there is a small but mighty crew working at the Oregon Food Bank facilities. We saw a big shift in the volunteering at food assistance sites in non-pandemic times. The volunteers we most count on are those who have retired; in their 60s or 70s — the same folks who need to take care of their health during this pandemic and very appropriately quarantine themselves. So for a few weeks, we were panicking if we were going to have some volunteers. Then new waves of volunteers came in, younger folks whose lives have been disrupted by the pandemic. Those who are currently out of work or working from home in a more flexible schedule or even high school students. We saw the community find a way to keep the volunteers coming and even at its worst in May and April last year, we never had more than 5% of our food assistance shut down due to volunteers.
Dwijayanti: What do you foresee ahead, as eviction moratoriums ease, relief checks stop coming and unemployment and underemployment set in?
Morgan: Access to safe, affordable housing is fundamental to our fight to end hunger, and the Oregon Food Bank has long advocated for policies that keep people in their homes. We’re heartened by recent legislative action to extend the foreclosure moratorium into 2022. And yet we know that the economic fallout of this pandemic will likely be felt for years, so we can’t afford to slow down in our efforts to build the stronger, more resilient systems. We need to emerge stronger from this crisis.
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