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Catholic Charities Regional Director Suzanne Edwards inspects a carton of raisins delivered to the organization’s Florida Gateway Food Bank. Demand for food assistance is surging while the economy is in a holding pattern. (CARL MCKINNEY/Lake City Reporter) -
Sam and Karen Bass from Live Oak Church of Christ Central load up on goods for their church’s pantry on Friday. (CARL MCKINNEY/Lake City Reporter)
Millions of Floridians are about to be hungry, and they’re looking to a statewide network of just 12 food banks to save them from their suffering.
“Do the math,” said Suzanne Edwards, regional director for Catholic Charities, which operates the Lake City-based Florida Gateway Food Bank in Lake City, a program facing an unprecedented surge in demand while local donations dwindle.
Edwards’ operation distributes goods to 66 nonprofit community partners throughout the region, including the Christian Service Center in Lake City and Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch in Live Oak, plus Catholic Charities’ own pantry. The start of the covid-19 pandemic triggered an “immediate spike” in requests for assistance, and it’s only going to go up, she said.
One of their partner pantries would normally see about 300 families in two weeks, Edwards said. Now it’s up to 400, while many of the food bank’s volunteers are senior citizens who are heeding an order by the governor to stay at home.
“I can stretch a dollar pretty doggone far,” she said. “But at some point, I’m going to run out of creativity.”
Working members of society — cashiers, hairdressers, waiters — are abruptly finding themselves without paychecks while the economy continues to be at a standstill, Edwards said.
“Now people are starting to be anxious, worried about how they’re going to provide for their families,” she said. “These are people that don’t ever come to nonprofits for help.”
They might even be the kind of people who would be donating to a food bank in normal times, Edwards said.
“People aren’t giving like they normally do because they’re uncertain themselves,” she said.
If not for Feeding Florida, a nonprofit food distribution network serving a dozen member food banks including her own , they’d be in a different position, Edwards said.
On Friday afternoon, a 53-foot tractor-trailer from Feeding Florida delivered a respectable supply of rice, beans, canned peaches and the like to the food bank.
“This food does not show up locally,” Edwards said. “It has to be on a tractor-trailer somewhere and it has to make its way to us.”
Feeding Florida, which gets most of its contributions from corporate sources, has helped them keep pace with demand, Edwards said.
But there’s no telling if and when they’ll reach a breaking point.
“With a hurricane, you know the storm’s coming, everybody prepares, it subsides and we’re going to go back to normal shortly,” Edwards said. “With this — we don’t know what’s coming.”