by Elise Craig

As lawmakers wrestle with the latest iteration of the bailout plan, local residents are struggling to put food on the table, and area aid organizations are scrambling to keep up with increased need and slimmer budgets.
With Thanksgiving approaching, the Alameda County Food Bank, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project and Berkeley’s 24th annual Thanksgiving Turkey Distribution are all finding significant increases in requests for help.
“November is the heaviest month of every year, but this economy is really adding fuel to the fire, ”said Brian Higgins of the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
The food bank’s help line connects those in need with organizations that provide emergency food and other services. Before this year, the help line has only exceeded 1500 calls in one month on two occasions. In 2008, it has exceeded 1500 calls in August, September, and October, and is on track to do it again in November. In October alone, the help line received 2,191 phone calls, and Higgins “wouldn’t be surprised” if they received 2400 or more this month. Compared to last year, calls are up 39 percent.
“Need is off the charts right now,” Higgins said. “The face of hunger in Alameda County is not the homeless and unemployed. It’s young people working sometimes two jobs and not making it. It’s a choice between rent and food, or food and daycare. People who haven’t ever had to make that choice before are calling in by the hundreds.”

Volunteers load up boxes at the 24th Annual Turkey Distribution.

The Berkeley Boosters Police Activities League gives out 250 baskets of food at both Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. This year, program coordinator Fele Uperefa has seen an increase of people looking to be added to the list for the for the 24th Annual Turkey Distribution

“We’ve definitely had a lot of requests. We’re just telling people if not Thanksgiving, we’ll definitely help them at Christmas,” she said.
Boxes are distributed to people who have been referred to the program—either by police officers who refer families on their beats or from other programs. Uperefa estimates that her office has received approximately 30 calls asking directly for help—twice as many as last year. The non-profit cannot raise the number of Thanksgiving baskets, but is hoping to add 50 more to the Christmas distribution.
At the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, a recent survey shows that the number of people who came in for a meal went up 30 percent between the first five months of the year and the second five months of the year, according to Paul Cwynar, development director.
The project runs several different programs—the North County Women’s Shelter, the Multi-Service Center, the Men’s Overnight Shelter, and the Quarter Meal Program, which is run out of the Trinity United Methodist Church. The meal program serves approximately 100 people per day, five days a week. The women’s shelter holds up to 30 women and their children, and the men’s shelter houses up to 50.
According to Food Service Manager Allana Marcel, the demographics of the women’s shelter have changed with the falling economy.
“I see women that we’ve never seen before, women that I wouldn’t expect to see here. Even women that are in suits. They still can’t make ends meet,” she said.
“Everything is going up as far of numbers of people in need,” Cwynar said. “But everything is also going up in terms of cost of food. It’s at least 10 percent higher than last year—and that’s a conservative estimate,” he said.

Donations from Rotary helped the Berkeley PAL fill the boxes.

According to Cwynar, the Project gets 66 percent of its funding from government sources, and—like programs across the state—it lost a significant amount of its usual funding to the cuts in the California budget: $30,000.
Though private donors stepped forward and matched the cut, next year is still up in the air.
“We are concerned,” said Cwynar. We know that a lot of foundation giving is, at best, going to be flat, if that. We are not going to be able to ask for an increase in funds.”
Budget cuts are less of a problem for the food bank, because many of their donations come in the form of food, not funding. Though the organization has only seen a very slight drop in donations—about 1 percent as compared to last year—they still have to combat increased need with a static budget.

The holidays are also the biggest time for donations that could help carry the bank through the rest of the fiscal year.
“With financial donations, we’ll really just have to see,” Higgins said. “This is the time of year when donations either come in, or they just don’t.”

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