DETROIT – Everyone knows that the pandemic has killed thousands and sickened hundreds of thousands in Michigan and Ohio. Jobs have been lost; families torn apart.
But what fewer know is what it has done to increase hunger, domestic abuse and homelessness. And it seems very likely that the worst is yet to come as winter deepens.
Stacy Averill is vice president of community giving for Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan, which serves five counties in the state, including Monroe, which borders Toledo.
She has never seen the need so great. “We are seeing a lot of people in need of help who were never in a position like this before – who could never imagine themselves,” needing a food bank before.
One young woman, for example, comes to get food not only for herself, but for her parents and grandparents, to lessen the risk that they might get COVID-19. “We have to be versatile in the way we do everything, from applying for grants to distributing aid,” she said.
Those who work to try to prevent people from hunger speak in terms of “food insecurity,” which means those who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Feeding America, a consortium of food banks, estimates that prior to the pandemic, there were about 566,270 people in Southeast Michigan who were at risk of hunger.
Now, that figure has ballooned to 778,000 – and child hunger is especially on the rise. Two out of every five people served by Gleaners are children – and Feeding America estimates that childhood hunger has risen from 13 percent to 22 percent in Monroe County alone as a result of the pandemic.
The need for food is huge: Gleaners estimates that it will distribute 80 million pounds of food this year, compared to 45 million in 2019 — and that still won’t be enough.
Two federal food programs that supplied the nation’s food banks with tons of food, a trade mitigation program and the farms-to-families food box program, are due to expire at the end of December. If they aren’t renewed, that will mean millions of pounds of food Gleaners will no longer have to distribute.
If anyone wants to help, Gleaners suggests the most efficient way is to donate money; social distancing has made it hard for many to volunteer, and financial donations go a lot farther since that enables Gleaners to buy in bulk.
Those who either want to donate or are in need themselves can find out where to go on Gleaners’ website: www.gcfb.org. In Monroe County, they will be distributing food from 2p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday (Dec. 10) at the Dundee Assembly of God on Custer Road.
The problems caused by the pandemic are worst of all for those who have the least and were in trouble to start with.
When it comes to taking care of the neediest, Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries (www.drmm.org) has been doing it longer than nearly anyone else. They began as a soup kitchen in 1909, and have expanded to a multi-layered charity that literally serves thousands of people every day.
Dr. Chad Audi, the president and CEO of the organization, is a devout Christian with an advanced degree in finance and a Ph.D in business management. Besides giving an average of 700 homeless people a place to sleep every night, he has expanded their reach to encompass drug treatment programs and housing for homeless veterans and homeless women with children.
The pandemic has hit DRMM especially hard. In some ways, they were ahead of the curve. “We defined the issue very early,” he said, “and in early February we knew something was happening and purchased a lot of PPE, while we still could. That has helped.”
But nobody was prepared for the intensity and duration of the COVID-19 crisis. Three staff members died. Others were no longer willing to come to work. “We said that everyone over 60 or with a pre-existing condition should stay home, and we paid them,” said Audi.
However, that left far fewer team members to serve an ever-growing desperately needy population. Because of social distancing, they could only put about a third as many people who needed help in the spaces they had been using, so they acquired and renovated additional facilities. “We turn nobody away.”
“We disinfect everything every six hours,” he added, adding that there were no signs COVID-19 was spreading in his facilities. He also said the most pressing need was money — but the rescue mission would also be grateful for disinfectants and janitorial supplies.
The Detroit community did respond with an outpouring of donations, Audi said; April was one of the best fundraising months in the rescue mission’s history.
But it wasn’t enough. We had to dip into our savings,” he added, then hesitated. “For the first time in my life, I feel pessimistic, not optimistic.” There are good reasons for that.
For one thing, Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries has seen a huge rise in domestic violence cases, thanks in part to people being confined and sometimes quarantined in close quarters at home.
And beyond that, he fears his resources soon may be stretched beyond their capacity if a sudden wave of evictions begins. “Some estimates are that 28 percent of people in Detroit are not paying their rent,” he said. There has been a moratorium on evictions in Michigan of people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic – but that is set to expire at the end of this month,
“We are working closely with the mayor, and he is trying to find some grant money. They are trying to do something, but, he pauses.
“I don’t know if it will be enough, and I don’t think the mayor knows if it will be enough,” he said of Detroit’s normally relentlessly optimistic Mike Duggan.
He too is seeing people who never dreamed this could happen to them, and hoping that those more fortunate –-so far — will do a lot more to help their neighbors, state and nation survive.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
