The Treasure Coast Food Bank serves more than 100,500 food-insecure people in Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee and St. Lucie County. Statistics compiled by Feeding America, in collaboration with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Nielsen Company, show that despite pockets of great wealth in Indian River County, 16.4 percent of the population – working adults, children, seniors and veterans – have no idea where their next meal will come from.
In recognition of September as National Hunger Action Month and to raise awareness of the issues of hunger and poverty facing our community, the TCFB hosted a Breakfast Roundtable last Wednesday at Leisure Square, attended by concerned citizens and nonprofit representatives.
David Vaina, TCFB Director of Strategic Resources led the discussion, which included panelists Judith Cruz, TCFB CEO, Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry, Karen Deigl, Senior Resource Association CEO, and Rev. Scott Alexander of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.
The dialogue touched on questions such as: “What do you think are the causes of poverty in America?” “What’s working in the fight against poverty and what’s not?” “Do you see things getting better?” “Do you think it’s possible to alleviate poverty without spending more public funds?”
Alexander, who has raised more than $100,000 in recent years to benefit Harvest Food and Outreach programs, said he got involved after being shocked by the number of hungry children and food-anxious adults in the community. He sees the causes of poverty and hunger in terms of macro and micro factors. Macro includes issues such as national wage disparity, the decline of good-paying blue collar jobs and the globalization of the economy; and micro includes personal issues such as mental illness, disability and old age. “These two things combine to make this a huge American problem,” he adds.
Through Meals on Wheels home visits, Deigl has found that in many cases, seniors have “done everything right,” working hard and saving money, only to lose their life savings due to a catastrophic illness or event. As a result, they often must choose between purchasing food or medication.
In Fellsmere, where roughly 29 percent lives below the poverty level, Touchberry perceives the dissolution of the family unit to be a contributing factor, noting a decrease in the number of people getting married combined with an increase in the number of single women having children.
Deigl noted that a major factor locally is a lack of business and industry, with positions primarily limited to lower-paying service jobs. “So we really need to look at what we can do to improve the job opportunities here,” she said. “If we’re bringing industry into the community, what kind should we be bringing in? What can we do to find higher-paying jobs?”
“We are demographically well situated; Americans want to be here,” said Alexander. He gave Fellsmere’s Florida Organic Aquaculture shrimp farm as a wonderful example of industry repurposing our agricultural base.
“We need to invest in ourselves and our local area to fix our problems; we need to invest in what we have,” agreed Cruz.
With the working poor forced to stretch their limited resources, many must make decisions in the moment, unable to afford the luxury of planning for a better future. Similarly, cutbacks in government funding have stretched nonprofit resources. “We’re stretched to the limit,” said Cruz, adding that he and others have been pursuing inter-agency collaborations and partnerships.
“Think where we’d be in this community without charitable giving; that’s working, but we’re just holding our own,” said Alexander. “I think the government has to make sure that folks don’t go hungry, and I think that we’ve cut things too far. It’s a partnership between the private sector and the nonprofits and government, and I don’t think the government is doing its part right now. Jesus said the poor will always be with you, and it sure seems that’s the case.”
Deigl and Cruz agreed, having observed continual funding cuts to assistance programs despite increases in population.
“We’re worse off now than we were 35 years ago when the Feed America network began,” said Cruz. “We were making headway. We were doing well. People were working. We’ll never get rid of hunger; we’ll never get rid of homelessness. There will always be people on social services because that’s just the way it will be. But the numbers were going down. Through SNAP [food stamps] we were making improvements, but after cutbacks we’re struggling now to go uphill backward.”
From a police prospective, Touchberry sees a clear correlation between poverty and crime. He would like to see an investment in programs such as the Bridges Out of Poverty training workshops presented by the Fellsmere Action Community Team (FACT), which are helping to empower people to develop relationship resources to get ahead rather than relying on handouts to get by.
“So if we’re going to throw money at the problem, let’s focus on prevention and changing behavioral mindsets,” said Touchberry, who sees potential job growth in Fellsmere. “With jobs comes a different lifestyle. So I do think that things will improve, but we’ve got to take action. We can’t just talk about what our problems are. We cannot continue to throw money at the problem and expect to create independence; we’ve got to empower and enable in a positive way.”
“This is a very split community of people who are incredibly wealthy and people who are very poor,” said audience member Jacqueline Warrior, IRC Juvenile Justice Council. “The cost of living A.L.I.C.E. report from the United Way blew me away when I saw that the survival budget for family of four – two adults and two children – was $48,000 a year. And then I look at jobs; they’re not living wages. I think your organizations are safety nets for the community; you’re taking it on because no one else is.”
Several other audience members, including Page Woodward, reiterated the importance of education as a means to lift people out of poverty. Woodward remarked that the Moonshot Moment goal of having 90 percent of third graders reading at grade level by 2018, has grown into an initiative that has infiltrated the community in many other ways, from prenatal care to parent literacy.
“The system that we have right now is not working,” said Freddie Woolfork, Gifford Youth Achievement Center. “We have to come up with a different strategy. The poor will always be with us but we can help a lot of individuals with education.”