SANTA ROSA, July 16 – The number of Sonoma County residents needing help to feed themselves and their families has risen 20 percent during each of the past two years, producing a growing community of people who are living on just one-fifth of the median household income of their neighbors, a study by the Redwood Empire Food Bank shows.

“Our most startling and ultimately significant finding is the incredibly low, median monthly income reported by food recipients of $930 a month,” the study said. “If you consider that $1,078 was the median rent for an apartment in Sonoma County in 2008, you can understand why there is little if any money left for food or necessities.”

The hunger study, Hunger in Sonoma County 2010, was conducted in 2009. It included the participation of 114 Sonoma County pantries, kitchens and shelters which interviewed some 357 recipients of food bank distributions in Sonoma, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol, and Rohnert Park/Cotati as well as other unincorporated areas of the county.

The study is part of the largest nation-wide study of food assistance ever conducted in the United States in which 185 food banks across the country joined with Feeding America and Mathematica, Inc., to create a landmark study at a critical juncture in U.S. economic history.

The REFB study is a comprehensive and statistically valid data set on the experience of people seeking food assistance and Sonoma County’s charitable response to hunger and the people served by food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters.

The study closes with reflections by David Goodman, Executive Director of the REFB who issues a call to action to meet the rise in hunger.

“What can be done? The overarching answer . . . is to do more. Everyone must do more to not only halt, but turn back the rising tide of food insecurity and hunger,” he said. “As food insecurity and hunger continue to increase both locally and nationally, the time to answer the question – if not now, then when? – is all the more relevant.”

The study findings are based on food relief recipients who filled out a 15-page survey distributed and gathered at food distribution sites throughout the county over a four-month period in 2009. Findings were analyzed by Mathematica, Inc., and the REFB results were published in a 16-page document this month.

The full text of the study is available at www.refb.org.

Highlights of the survey include:

Food Insecurity

• 74 percent of households receiving food relief in Sonoma County experience low or very low food security, which is defined by the USDA as reports of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.
• Food insecurity is particularly difficult for households with children. When children are in the home, households reporting “low food security” rose from 43.8 percent without children to 57.8 percent with children under 18.

Jobs and Income

• 52 percent of food recipients are working and report the largest source of their income comes from a job. The next highest source of income is Social Security.
• Only 2.7 percent of food recipients participating in the study rely on government assistance programs commonly called welfare.

• 61 percent of food recipients live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $903 a month for one person, $1,214 for two people, and $1,838 for a family of four.
• 35 percent were forced to choose between paying for food and paying for other basic necessities.
• About a third of recipients had to choose between buying food or paying for utilities, rent, medicine or medical care.
• 30 percent have no access to a car which limited their ability to seek food, services and a job.
• 21 percent had a hard time or were late paying rent during the previous month.
• 10 percent have no place to live.

Children

• Of households with children, 73 percent have incomes 130 percent below poverty line
• 17 percent of recipients said their children were hungry during the previous year.
• 38 percent of all food recipients are under 18.

“In Sonoma County, land of award-winning wineries and gourmet eateries, there are families that cannot afford to feed their children nutritious food,” the study said.

The report notes that rising rates of childhood obesity is directly related by the inability of families to provide healthy food for their children.

“If we don’t stop the steady increase in obesity, health experts fear that the current generation of children in America will have shorter life expectancies than their parents for the first time in 200 years,” the study said.

Seniors

• 41 percent of senior food recipients 65 and older report low or very low food security.
• 58 percent of households with at least one person over 65 live on incomes 130 percent of poverty, and another 36 percent have incomes between 131-150 percent of poverty.

The study also reports on the ability of the 146 various agencies that work with the REFB to provide hunger relief in Sonoma County. It found that agencies report an increase in requests for help from 70 to 88 percent in 2009 versus the previous three years. Seventy-seven percent of agency food comes from the REFB, 78 percent of agencies have no paid staff, and the average number of meals served by kitchens in a day was 304.

Goodman, in a final section of the study, said the process of conducting a hunger survey is sobering even for people who regularly help thousands of people each month with food assistance.

Goodman said:

“There is nothing so profound as spending 45 minutes with an individual discussing their experience – what precipitated their situation, how long they have been in need of help, and what they see for their future. As a hunger study interviewer, one gains a strong understanding of the fragility of well-being. None of the people interviewed ever imagined they would be seeking food assistance.”

The REFB report said the study information will be used to help improve services, advocate for policy changes and “fuel our mission of ending hunger in our community.”

Goodman said the study shows that, among other things, that there are varying degrees of food insecurity and hunger, and as a result different types of help are necessary to meet people’s needs, such as:

• A person who is hungry every day will be best served by a soup kitchen.
• Someone whose income can’t last them through the week or month will find a food pantry most beneficial.
• Some people can make it on their own if they have access to affordable groceries.

“In this situation, a Value Marketplace where one can find affordable groceries is the best choice,” Goodman said.

Goodman observed that the path to hunger begins in the pocket book and that the average food recipient is in a financial hole before he or she can even pay for transportation, child care, utilities, medicine, health insurance and food.

Food insecurity is especially pronounced in families with children, he said, and in terms of seniors, discussions of their plight are particularly “tough to bear.”
“Not only is there the pain of hunger and food insecurity, but also the bruised pride and broken spirit of a destiny unimagined,” he said.

Goodman noted that more people than ever are hungry especially during the recent economic downturn and that no one can really be a stranger to extent of hunger in the community.

“Suddenly, it’s no longer them but us. People we know and love have experienced the challenges of living on the margin, struggling with mortgage payments, health care costs, an unexpected emergency, the escalating cost of education.”

The study concludes that the problem and solution are everyone’s challenge.

“We must do even more than we have in the past. Those who are already helping need to do more and those who have not been involved need to begin,” it said.

The REFB, working with 146 partner agencies, provides hunger relief to some 70,000 individuals and families in every community of Sonoma County including Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Sonoma Valley, Santa Rosa, the West County and Russian River communities and the North County from Windsor to Cloverdale.

The REFB is also the primary food source for pantries serving Lake, Mendocino, Del Norte and Humboldt counties.

For more information, call Goodman at 707-523-7900.