Record Idaho unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic increases need for food
The food pantry at the Vineyard Boise Christian Fellowship wasn’t set to open for a half-hour, but a line of cars had already parked next to the warehouse north of Chinden Boulevard.
Since the coronavirus pandemic struck Idaho in March, the pantry, which operates from 10 to noon on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, has seen the number of people needing food for their families rise.
Pantry volunteers used to packing boxes for 150 families a week before the pandemic are sometimes seeing more than that on a single day at the warehouse, located behind the church at 4950 N. Bradley St. in Garden City.
“The numbers just skyrocketed,” Samuel Burns, the church’s benevolence director, said in an interview May 20. “We did 300 families one day, 200 families another day.”
Food comes from The Idaho Foodbank, El-Ada Community Partnership, Feeding America, a national food bank, and several grocery stores, including Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.
Across Idaho, the amount of food distributed by The Idaho Foodbank has increased 30% during the pandemic. The private, donor-supported nonprofit, established in 1984, serves 230 community-based organizations statewide, including the food pantry run by Vineyard Boise Christian Fellowship.
In April, the Foodbank’s warehouses in Boise, Pocatello and Lewiston distributed 2.4 million pounds of food.
“Looking at the increased number of unemployed individuals, that puts a strain on people’s budgets,” CEO Karen Vauk said by phone. “For some individuals, especially those who are waiting for their unemployment benefits, it’s not hard to understand they find themselves needing some additional assistance, and food is oftentimes the area where they’ll trim their budget.”
Ada, Blaine, Valley and Cassia counties had the greatest increases in need, Vauk said.
Ada County, with nearly 500,000 people, is the state’s most populous. Blaine and Valley counties, where outdoor recreation and tourism are important to the economy, saw those industries shut down because of the coronavirus. Cassia County, in the Burley area, has a low per capita income, $21,547 in 2018, according to the U. S. Census Bureau.
At Vineyard’s pantry, the number of people needing assistance span all income groups, Burns said.
“It was amazing to me, though, to see Jaguars and BMWs and Mercedes in the food lines,” he said.
The biggest need came in the last weeks of March and the first weeks of April. “And then, my guess is because of unemployment checks coming in and the stimulus package (checks), the numbers went down,” he said.
St. Vincent de Paul also saw a big jump in people needing assistance at its food bank at 3209 W. Overland Road in Boise. And like the Vineyard pantry, the need has dropped off in recent weeks.
“It’s still running a little above normal but it’s pretty stable right now, Ralph May, St. Vincent de Paul’s executive director, said by phone.
St. Vincent, which operates its food bank at 3209 W. Overland Road on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings, is working with The Idaho Foodbank to develop a mobile pantry that would go into some of Boise’s most impoverished neighborhoods.
Idaho recorded a record high unemployment rate of 11.5% in April, according to the Idaho Labor Department. It surpassed the previous record of 10.2% in December 1982 and a Great Recession peak of 9.6 percent in June 2009.
Before the pandemic, 90% of the food distributed by The Idaho Foodbank was donated. More recently, it had to buy more food to keep up with the demand, Vauk said.
“Last year, for the entire year, we purchased 18 truckloads of food, while the rest was donated,” she said. “In the last 90 days, we have purchased 29 truckloads of food.”
The public could help, Vauk said, by donating to The Idaho Foodbank so more food can be purchased for those in need. Every dollar provides food for five meals, she said.
Idaho food donations help in other states
Last month, a photo in The Times Picayune newspaper in New Orleans featured a familiar sight to fruit buyers in Idaho.
A stack of boxes carried the red logo of Symms Fruit Ranch. Apples from the Caldwell grower were handed out to 2,000 people who came to a food-bank giveaway near Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.
Sally Symms, a spokesperson for Symms Fruit Ranch, said she didn’t know how the boxes of apples got to Louisiana but suspects it may have come through Feeding America.
“They source products from grower-shippers like us to supply food banks throughout the country,” Symms said by phone. “So it could have been something that we had set up with them.”
Feeding America provides meals to 46 million people across the U.S. each year.
“Forty percent on average of the people that we’re seeing now have never relied upon the charitable food system before,” CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on May 17. “So we’re definitely seeing different people showing up.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
