Food banks feel wave of new families in need

As food banks and welfare services brace for the holiday season, when the number of people in need typically reach out for help is at its highest point of the year, several services around the valley were feeling the rise in need before the usual swell.

The Flathead Food Bank has met a massive influx of new families this year: 713 more individuals and 625 more households than last year. Flathead Food Bank director of development Bob Helder said while conditions may be taking a positive turn for most markets, industries and employees around the valley, a larger percentage of Flathead residents are still recovering from the Great Recession in 2008.

“Our people are so underemployed,” Helder said. “The reality is when the recession hit, northwest Montana was the last to be effected by it. History and tradition says we’re the last to recover, too.”

Helder said numbers based on the individuals coming to the Flathead Food Bank for services, 76 percent take home less than $15,000 a year, while 51 percent earn less than $10,000. Despite the high number of jobs available through organizations like the Flathead Job Service, circumstances that bring people to area food banks can strike at unexpected moments. People who might find their job trimmed from the payrolls one day are sometimes already having trouble paying rent, Helder said, coupling a sudden loss of income with a void in affordable housing options in the Flathead.

“There’s a little bit of every story,” Helder said. “Someone might lose a job, or there might be an unexpected hospitalization. When I’m out speaking to people, there’s an awful lot of people who are one crisis or emergency away from needing out services. One thing can throw it all off.”

The Flathead Food Bank last year served individuals 73,581 times through its main office and six mobile sites.

“That’s incredible,” Helder said. “They’re coming to the Food Bank and getting food or backpacks. That’s a lot of need in little Flathead County.”

Helder said several factors contribute to result in such need around the Flathead. He said a high population of people with only a high school education is limiting in where people can get jobs to pay enough for housing costs, utility costs and food.

“Our housing costs here are really high,” he said. “Housing is a huge issue and then access to health care. All that comes together in factors that create these perfect storms in people’s lives.”

In the North Valley, Whitefish is especially aware of its affordable housing issues, which drove public officials and business members to form the Affordable Housing Task Force.

“When your housing costs are exceeding 28 percent of your income, the other things that are going to be lacking in your budget will be food and utilities,” said SueAnn Grogan-King, executive director at the North Valley Food Bank.

Grogan-King said she hasn’t noticed the uptick in families and individuals in need that Flathead Food Bank has, although she’s seen many new faces replace those who have become regulars at the food bank.

“Because we’re a train town, a lot of people come in that we’ve never seen before,” she said. “We are seeing more folks on the move, not settling in but in need of help where they go to find a place where they make a living.”

While the numbers haven’t shifted dramatically for North Valley Food Bank, the social needs organizations do share a uniform rise in families served during the holidays. The Bigfork Food Bank saw a bump in families this year, particularly families who work regular jobs, so they adjusted their hours to serve people from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. twice a month, rather than its usual 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. schedule.

The Feed the Flathead community kitchen in Kalispell had also seen an increase in families served before it began ramping up for the holidays, when their numbers jump from about 40 individuals per meal up around 110 people. B Bradford Fenchak, president of the Feed the Flathead board of directors, said a growing drug addiction problem in the Flathead has complicated hunger issues for people associated with the problem.

“I’ve lived here a long time,” Bradford Fenchak said. “People who are doing methamphetamine don’t show up very often, but you might have people who are impacted by people who are on heroine or whatever.”

A lack of health care services in the area adds to the batch of circumstances leaving people in need, Bradford Fenchak said. She sees people self-medicating on the street rather with professional help, draining what little resources they have.

While the will to help out may match the growing number of families who need services, the resources to help pay for that cost is becoming more thin.

The Flathead Food Bank relies heavily on donations and grant funding. Earlier this month, the organization secured a $10,000 grant from Weyerhaeuser, which Helder said will go toward buying proteins, such as nuts, chilli and tuna, to stock up for the upcoming holidays. In total, Helder said the Flathead Food Bank will spend about $55,000 on protein this year.

That grant comes at a time when it’s become even harder to secure funding for social needs operations like the food bank. Helder said more than 50 new nonprofits joining the community this year means it’s that many more organizations competing for grant money.

“Which means that we have to find new funding sources,” Helder said. “So to get this grant we just received is huge.”

Because the grant process is becoming more competitive, Helder said that cash donations are becoming more important to the food bank. While food donations always provide a positive boost, Helder said he can make more food out of cash than the average person.

“I can buy stuff a whole lot cheaper than you can through the food bank network,” he said. But to make that system work, “we really just need people to give. We continue to ask churches, communities, companies to make cash donations because we’ve got a lot of hungry people that live on your street and you might not know they’re hungry and you might not know their story.”

The Flathead Food Bank continues to explore different funding sources and for the time being, Helder said resources aren’t so thin that the organization is near the verge of collapse. Much like the families caught in unexpected circumstances though, Helder and the food bank want to stay prepared for the worst.

“Every year we get different funding from different sources and somehow, in miraculous ways, we pull it off to get food to the people coming through our door,” he said. “As soon as the holiday hits we have more people coming through our doors, but we need help to feed them.”

For more information on the Flathead Food Bank, visit www.flatheadfoodbank.com.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.