As people focus on giving back to their community during the holiday season, food banks and other hunger-relief groups around the nation report that large numbers of the "working poor" are straining their resources even as many Americans enjoy unprecedented prosperity.
To help quantify the problem, the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) on Thursday, Dec. 14 will release its annual report on hunger and homelessness, the Associated Press reports.
Burlington, Vermont Mayor Peter Clavelle, who heads up the USCM's task force on hunger and homelessness, said this year's report "documents the casualties of our nation’s unprecedented prosperity. As housing costs in our nation’s cities grow increasingly beyond the reach of working families, more and more folks are being forced to choose between paying the rent and putting food on the table.
"It’s an untenable situation that the nation’s Mayors see firsthand in their cities; we have got to do all we can to change it."
The USCM report is likely to echo the earlier findings of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that found 10 million American families, or 9.7 percent of U.S. households, had "inadequate access to food" during 1996-1998, the time of the USDA study.
New Mexico reported the largest number of families needing food help, at 15.1 percent of all of the state's families.
The Chicago-based America's Second Harvest food bank umbrella group reports that one problem seen around the country is that many people leaving welfare were never told they remained eligible for food stamps.
Other food banks and soup kitchens contacted by AP report that many working poor people are faced with additional expenses from low-wage jobs that don't offer health insurance, soaring rents in the nation's largest cities and other fast-growing areas, and recent cold weather that has aggravated rising energy costs for heating oil, natural gas and electricity.
"It does become a choice between 'Do I take my child to the doctor, pay my utility bill or go to the grocery store and buy food?'" said Cindy Cerf, spokeswoman for St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix. "These aren't people who are depending on welfare. It's just that they're at the low end of the pay scale."
Another problem is that many donors believe hunger isn't a problem in America any more, so they aren't giving to food-relief groups.
"It's a little harder to convince people there's a whole group of people who have been left behind by that prosperity," said Melody Wattenbarger of the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, N.M. Her group has distributed 10 million pounds of food this year -— double last year's amount.
