OAKLAND — Because of the high cost of living in Alameda County, people are going hungry as they sacrifice meals to pay rent or meet other expenses, a national study shows.
Almost 800,000 Bay Area residents are experiencing food insecurity, with the highest number living in Alameda County, it said. About 7.15 million live in the Bay Area.
Some 12.2 percent of Alameda County’s population — or about 198,950 people — are in the predicament of not having enough food, according to Feeding America, a nonprofit that carried out the study and is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States.
Many, such as Anthony Rolley of Alameda, turn to food banks for help.
“I fell on hard times,” said the 61-year-old Rolley, who is among the approximately 5,200 people served annually at the Alameda Food Bank in the city of Alameda. “I needed a little assistance with food.”
Food insecurity is defined as a lack of access at times to enough food for an active, healthy life, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Making the situation worse is the fact that 39 percent of Alameda County residents identified as food insecure earn too much to qualify for government benefits, such as CalFresh, said Allison Pratt, chief of partnerships and strategy at the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
“For many, coming here is a necessity for keeping a household together,” said Carla Hilliard, director of operations for Hayward’s South Hayward Parish, which distributes food to about 325 people each week through its food pantry. “It could be a matter of needing a carton of milk, lunch meat or some bread just to get by.”
The numbers of people facing food insecurity are equally sobering for other counties.
In Contra Costa County, 10.10 percent of the population, or about 113,940 people, are struggling with getting enough food while meeting expenses, the study shows. In Santa Clara County, it’s 8.9 percent, or 169,360 people.
In Marin County, it’s 9.5 percent of the population, or 24,840 individuals. In San Mateo County, it’s 8.3 percent, or 63,170 people.
“People experiencing food insecurity show patterns of disrupted eating, reduced food intake and reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet,” Pratt said. “Tens of thousands of additional people in Alameda County are on the precipice of (possibly going without food) and worry every day about how to pay their bills and put food on the table.”
Much of the effort to balance getting enough food comes down to the steep cost of living in the Bay Area, where the high cost of housing has especially hit folks hard as they try to make ends meet.
Nationally, the average cost of a meal is $3.02, Pratt said. In Alameda County, the average cost is $3.80, almost 25 percent above the national average.
In Contra Costa County, the average meal costs $3.61, according to the study. In Santa Clara County it’s $3.69, while in Santa Cruz County, where an estimated 11.1 percent of the population are food insecure, $3.89 covers the average cost.
“We are seeing a lot more working people,” said Cindy Houts, executive director of the Alameda Food Bank. “It’s not just the poorest of the poor.”
Getting supplemental food can literally trim hundreds of dollars off a family’s grocery bill each month, Houts said.
“It can make the difference in whether you have to move because you cannot afford the rent,” she said.
Rolley, who is unemployed, has been regularly visiting the Alameda Food Bank for five years. It gives himself and his fiancée a sense of security knowing that food will be on the table.
“It’s a way for me to not worry about us going hungry,” said Rolley, who also volunteers with the organization.
The Alameda Food Bank served dozens of families of the U.S. Coast Guard, which has a base in the city, in January when the federal government shut down for 35 days and service members were not getting a paycheck.
Most who visit South Hayward Parish are low income or very low income, Hilliard said.
“We have a lot of elderly,” she said. “But we are also seeing a lot more families. Not just moms with kids, but dads with kids.”
“Hunger saps children of energy and potential, stresses families and diminishes opportunities,” she said.
Feeding America has carried out the study, known as “Map the Meal Gap,” each year since 2011 to learn more about hunger at the local level and find ways to combat it.
The organization operates a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, feeding 46 million people each year.
The annual study includes every U.S. county and congressional district and uses publicly available data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics to research what contributes to food insecurity, such as unemployment and poverty.
Along with estimating the cost of an average meal, the study reviewed the amount of need among people who are food insecure, using local data from Nielsen, the company that analyses consumers and markets, and national survey data from the Census Bureau.
This year’s study cited a U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate that 40 million people, including more than 12 million children, were food insecure in the United States as of 2017. They can be found in every county, the research showed.
“There isn’t a single state or county in America free from child hunger, and it is within our collective power to change that and ensure that today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders,” Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, chief executive officer of Feeding America, said in a release.
