Food bank workers responsible for collecting and distributing food to hunger relief sites are struggling with exhaustion as huge spikes in demand from the coronavirus pandemic have created seven-day workweeks.
“We’ve been very fortunate to have a majority of our staff, 90%, come to work every single day,” said Paule Pachter, CEO of Long Island Cares. “I would be lying if I said we weren’t getting exhausted.”
Pachter’s organization delivers food to seven distribution sites and has 60 employees. Since the coronavirus crisis, demand for food has increased 64%.
“Of that 64%, 30% are people who have never come to Long Island Cares before. They are victims of COVID-19,” he said.
Carlos Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, served roughly 700,000 people a year in his state before the pandemic. That number has jumped nearly 45% since the crisis began, an increase of over 300,000 people over the course of a year, which has taken a toll on his employees.
“It would be disingenuous not to say you’re overwhelmed, but there are so many aspects to this; it’s not just food distribution but the complexity of operating in a pandemic like this,” he said. “We literally have team members who are losing family members and friends and colleagues to the pandemic as they respond to their duties. It’s overwhelming in so many different ways.”
Places where Rodriguez’s organization delivers have seen long lines of drivers waiting to pick up food, creating the kinds of images that have drawn notice on social media.
“We have long lines of cars in our programs. We have long lines going around the block in some of our urban environments,” he said.
Pachter’s organization had a bad experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy with people lining up in cars to receive food. His organization now delivers the food to many of its recipients.
Workers also contend with the possibility of becoming infected by the virus. To lower anxieties, social distancing is strictly enforced.
“We spent a lot of money on masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and other PPE,” Pachter said. “We just got the building professionally sanitized last week. We’ll be doing that quarterly. We’re trying to make our staff as comfortable as we possibly can about coming to work.”
Jeremiah Huston, assistant director of communications for the Arlington Food Assistance Center, said his organization augmented how people receive food to lower the odds of people becoming infected.
“We have modified our own food distribution; we hand out pre-made food bags with our normal assortment of food to speed up and to reduce the amount of time that a family is here to make sure that everyone is safe,” he said.
The Capital Area Food Bank, which is the largest food bank in the Washington, D.C., area, normally serves 450 nonprofit organizations. Right now, about 50% of them are closed during the pandemic because many of the volunteers who work at these organizations are older or have underlying health conditions that put them at risk of infection.
One issue that social distancing can’t fix is the fact that many of these organizations are running low on food donations and have to rely on new channels that prove to be expensive.
Nearly 60% of food banks in the Feeding America network face reduced inventory levels amid rising demand as food donations decline. The organization estimated that $1.4 billion in additional resources will be needed over the next six months to provide enough food for people who depend on it.
Donations at the Capital Area Food Bank are also lower, with retail food donations down by over 75%, according to a spokesperson for the organization.
“The food bank is purchasing millions of dollars worth of food just to keep our inventory levels steady. In April, we have now purchased nearly 90 truckloads of food, more than double the amount we would normally purchase in a full year, in order to have enough food on hand to meet the need this month into June,” the spokesperson for the organization told the Washington Examiner.
Rodriguez said his organization is feeling strained when it comes to food supplies.
“The supplies are stretched. We are able to provide food throughout the state, but they are stretched. And we are having to make up the loss in donated food that we normally rely on with purchasing,” he said.
Pachter isn’t sure what his food supply will be six months from now.
“I think right now we’re getting by OK,” he said. “What the next two, three months — six months will be, I don’t know.”
