Like any regular delivery at local nonprofit Cooperation Humboldt, six full boxes of produce arrived late Thursday night to stock the “little free pantries” that offer fresh food around Eureka to anyone walking by.
But then something unusual happened. In less than a day, all of the produce was gone.
“It usually takes a lot more effort to share our food,” said David Cobb, the organization’s co-founder. “The need that we’re seeing is not just great; it is acute.”
The pantries have been around for several years, but have been far busier than usual in recent months — anecdotal evidence for a sharp rise in greater food needs among residents during the coronavirus pandemic, Cobb said.
Food insecurity climbed among residents from early in the coronavirus era. Between February and April, sign-ups for CalFresh, the state’s low-income food benefits program, rose by 82%.
“Some of the federal assistance programs (like EBT food stamps) have been very helpful for folks,” said Ann Holcomb, executive director at local nonprofit Food For People.
Federal stimulus checks have also been a stabilizing force. Carly Robbins, development director at Food For People, said that a sharp rise in people using the organization’s services at the start of the pandemic mellowed out once residents who found themselves out of work began receiving stimulus money.
Among the factors affecting food insecurity, Robbins points to unemployment as the largest. Between May 2019 and May 2020, unemployment climbed by nearly 1,000%, the Times-Standard reported last month.
“From the stories I’ve heard, a lot of people were unemployed for the first time because of the pandemic,” Robbins said. “They were worried and stressed; it was a completely new situation for them. Our senior population, especially, really needed the food.”
Food For People’s summer lunch program is bound by certain rules because of its funding. children are required to be on-site with their parents in order for families to receive food, “which of course doesn’t work well in a pandemic situation,” Robbins said.
As a workaround, local school districts will offer their own summer lunch programs, so Food For People can coordinate more of its efforts in the county’s rural areas, like Hoopa and Willow Creek.
Extensive damage to the organization’s warehouse had left the nonprofit in a tight spot near the start of the pandemic, but help arrived from 1st District Supervisor Rex Bohn, the organization announced Friday in a release.
Bohn gathered donations from local businesses like Schmidbauer Lumber, Green Diamond Resources and Mendocino, Humboldt Redwood Company.
Cooperation Humboldt, meanwhile, has launched the “Humboldt Covid-19 Community Response Team,” which will tackle food insecurity during the pandemic, among other social health concerns.
Cobb said volunteers have ensured that the little free pantries around town remain sanitized. Glove-wearing stewards regularly wipe down each of the boxes to ensure they don’t contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
Organizations are locked in for a coronavirus summer. But what lies beyond remains uncertain and continues to depend heavily on the availability of federal resources.
“Like many people, we are cautiously watching what things will look like in the fall,” Robbins said. “If those unemployment benefits go down at any point, that could really affect the community.”
Shomik Mukherjee can be reached at 707-441-0504.
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COVID-19: Humboldt County’s nonprofits rally to feed hungry - Eureka Times-Standard
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