Hunger-relief charities have found that the greatest increase in hungry Americans has been among the working poor. Despite their own hard work, they cannot always make ends meet. To cover rent for a family of four takes 80 hours a week at a minimum wage salary. Increasingly, working poor families are seeking emergency food supplies for hunger relief. After demonstrating need, anyone in Sacramento County can receive a three-day supply of food, up to once a month, from River City Community Services.

Unfortunately, a recent dramatic increase in demand for food assistance has coincided with a significant decrease in the availability of donated and low-cost food supplies upon which food banks like River City Community Services depend.
Demand for Food Assistance

• RCCS provided emergency food assistance to over 29,000 Sacramentans in 2007, up from 24,000 in 2006.
• The increase in need was particularly dramatic in the last three months of 2007, when requests to RCCS for help increased by 40%.
• The most recent study of hunger in the Sacramento area, published by the Sacramento Hunger Commission in 2003, estimated that 75,000 adults in Sacramento were "food insecure".
• RCCS saw a startling increase in assistance requests on behalf of children in the last three months of 2007, when nearly four out of ten meals were provided for children.
• A 2007 Brookings Institution study found that over half (55%) of lower-income households held debt, and one quarter of lower-income borrowers spend more than 40% of their income just servicing debt.
• The U.S. poor living in suburbs now outnumber the poor living in cities by more than one million.

Decreases in Food Supply

• A spokesperson for America's Second Harvest recently called the shortages at food banks the worst the nation's largest hunger-relief organization has seen in over 25 years.
• Food banks are facing shortages due to collision of factors, including a smaller national agricultural surplus, more efficient stock management by grocery stores, and reduced donations.

Sources and links:

Hunger Hits Home", http://www.targethunger.com/Community-Food-Security/hhh_03.htm.

"Hunger in America 2006," reproduced in The Almanac of Hunger and Poverty in America 2007, America's Second Harvest, 2007.

Fellowes, Matt and Mabanta, Mia, "Borrowing to Get Ahead, and Behind: The Credit Boom and Bust in Lower-Income Markets," The Brookings Institution, May 11, 2007,
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007/0511metropolitanpolicy_fellowes.aspx

Berube, Alan and Kneebone, Elizabeth, "Two Steps Back: City and Suburban Poverty Trends, 1999-2005, The Brookings Institution, December 2006.

Zezima, Katie, "Food Banks, in a Squeeze, Tighten Belts," New York Times, November 30, 2007.

Wiener, Jocelyn, "Greater Need, Skimpier Shelves at Food Banks," Sacramento Bee, December 31, 2007.