Hunger in a Land of Plenty : County Comes Together to Spotlight a Growing Problem

Veronica Alcantar and Jesus Gonzalez looked bewildered and frightened as they waited in line with their young daughters for a bag of free groceries at a Costa Mesa emergency center.

The couple in their 20s had been out of work for two weeks, they said. Neighbors in Santa Ana had helped them as much as they could. But after Alcantar used the last of their meager funds to buy diapers for 11-month-old Jessica, she and her husband decided to swallow their pride and come to Share Our Selves, one of many nonprofit charitable agencies in Orange County that dispense food, clothing, supplies and rent vouchers to the hungry and homeless.

“We don’t know what to do,” Alcantar said, looking desperately at the baby and 6-year-old Michelle, who were exhausted from the long morning wait at the center. “We need to work, because we need to support these children. We need to get them Pampers. We need to get them food and medical attention.”

Elsewhere, a disabled former limousine driver who lives on $70 a week reluctantly takes food from her church and the Salvation Army in Anaheim. A 95-year-old Costa Mesa woman’s only meal each day is lunch at a local senior center.

They are but a handful of the estimated tens of thousands of people in Orange County who depend on food handouts to make it through each month. They include single mothers, seniors on fixed incomes, the disabled, minimum-wage earners, the homeless. And those who feed them say their numbers are on the rise.

To highlight the growing problem, the County Board of Supervisors and leaders of 15 cities have declared this Hunger Week in Orange County. Schools, churches and businesses around the county have organized food drives to collect donations for local food banks, which mostly depend on private giving now that stores of surplus government commodities are nearly exhausted.

Food providers say they hope Hunger Week will draw public attention to a problem few associate with opulent Orange County, where the median annual income is $45,176, according to the county’s demographer.

“I think too many people believe that hunger does not really exist in Orange County, and that poor people don’t really exist,” said Dianna Turner, assistant director of Feedback Foundation, which operates a countywide lunch program for seniors.

‘A lot of what we hear is, ‘Well, it doesn’t really happen here.’ And I think it’s imperative that there’s really more awareness of what’s going on in our back yard,” she said.

Just how many of Orange County’s more than 2.2 million residents rely on charity to feed themselves is not known.

In 1980, the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimated that 320,000 county residents had to seek food handouts or went hungry at least once during each month. Since then, food providers say the number of people coming to community centers, food banks, soup kitchens and shelters has jumped alarmingly.

At Share Our Selves, for example, the number of people seeking food has jumped about 20% since 1984. Likewise, at Southwest Community Center in Santa Ana, the number of people seeking hot meals has risen about 20% from 95,000 in 1985 to 116,000 in 1987. During the same period, the number of families seeking free food baskets has nearly doubled, center officials say.

“There are more (hungry people) than this county can handle,” said Jim Hamlett, spokesman for the Community Development Council, which runs one of the county’s two main food banks. “And it doesn’t get less, it gets more.”

Food providers cite numerous reasons for the increased need, including cutbacks in federal programs for the poor and the county’s growing population. But the major reason people need food handouts, providers say, is the astronomical cost of housing in Orange County, where the median rent has risen to more than $700 a month.

“For some to afford to live in this county is just out of sight,” said Warren Johnson, business administrator for the Salvation Army in Santa Ana. “It forces them to make some uncomfortable decisions. And that is that their own well-being comes last in priorities. They literally work day in and day out to pay for their car and their home, just to survive.”

The problem is especially acute for those on fixed incomes.

Irene Merrill, 95, lives in a mobile home in Costa Mesa. She pays $300 of the $500 she gets from Social Security each month to rent her trailer space. Next month, her rent will go up about $20. Her Social Security will not.

Merrill buys a few groceries at a nearby store. But the only real meal she eats each day is at the senior center in Costa Mesa’s Rea Community Center.

“I don’t eat all of my lunch here,” said the frail, white-haired Merrill, who walks with halting steps. “What I take home, I usually eat in the evening. It’s awful hard to make ends meet.”

Ask federal, state, county and local poverty agency officials how many people are at risk of going hungry at least once each month in Orange County, and estimates range from more than 300,000 to 600,000. But all fall back on the 1980 figure of 320,000 as a benchmark.

Yet that 1980 federal figure itself is at best a guess, combining the total number of people who were either unemployed, received welfare, had incomes below the federal poverty level or were low-income seniors on fixed incomes, officials said.

(In 1987, the federal poverty level for a family of three was $9,300 a year. That figure is based on how much it costs a U.S. family to feed itself, and does not take into account variations in other costs, such as rent. In Orange County, the median monthly rent is now $715, according to a Los Angeles Times poll in June.)

Other indicators are the amount of food distributed and the number of people served by the multitude of poverty agencies throughout Orange County.

Dan Harney, director of the Food Distribution Center in Orange, estimated that his food bank, which supplies 216 nonprofit agencies, served 100,000 people last year.

Officials at the Community Development Council, which distributes food to about 120 private agencies, could not estimate how many people the food bank served last year. But spokesman Hamlett said the council gave out about 126,000 emergency food boxes and 50,000 holiday food baskets last year. In addition, the council distributed 900,000 pounds of privately donated food, 2.7 million pounds of U.S. Department of Agriculture surplus commodities and 210,000 pounds of food bought with council funds.

Food providers say most people come for assistance when they are in a crunch--when their Social Security or welfare checks have run out, or when unforeseen expenses, such as medical bills, make it impossible for them to buy food.

As a result, the problem of hunger in Orange County is not so much a matter of starvation as it is one of improper and inadequate diet.

“Hunger is very different in Orange County and the United States than it would be in Ethiopia,” said Peter Ladany, a former director of the state Department of Economic Opportunity, who now runs a consulting firm in Sacramento.

“Here the problem is with proper food, nutritional food. . . . It’s a question of allocation of resources. There is insufficient income to buy the correct foods.”

Linda Walfield, a nutritionist at the County Health Care Agency, said county clinics often receive malnourished clients. Although she believes most poor nutrition is a direct result of poverty, some of it is also the result of ignorance, she said.

“There are those who don’t do the best with the amount of money they have,” Walfield said. “They need some education. It’s complicated. You see some examples of people that are of low incomes, and they want to do something for their kids, and the best thing they can do is give them a Coke. . . . It’s some small luxury that’s affordable.”

But for those who do not know where to go for help or are too proud to seek it, the deprivation can be serious. Merle Hattleberg, director of a 10-year-old lunch program that feeds 160 seniors each weekday in Costa Mesa, said she has known senior citizens who were reduced to eating dog food.

Hattleberg said one client was referred by a doctor, who said she was malnourished.

“When she first started using the center, she was eating out of trash cans,” Hattleberg said.

Jeanette Ray, 32, sifted through the groceries she had just received from Share Our Selves--a bag of powdered milk, a pound of dried beans, two packages of oatmeal, pasta salad mix, a loaf of wheat bread, cans of pork and beans and tomato sauce. She wondered aloud how long it would last her and her two children, ages 11 and 13.

Since injuring an ankle a few years ago, the former waitress said, she has been unable to work and has had to rely on disability payments. Last month, Ray got a $463 disability check. The rent for her one-bedroom Huntington Beach apartment is $600. A relative helps out with $200 of that, she said, and friends sometimes give her food. But it isn’t enough.

“I didn’t eat yesterday, because I didn’t have anything,” Ray said in an emotionless voice that belied the anxiety in her eyes. “I fed (my children) Top Ramen. Three meals of Top Ramen.”

Ray glanced disconsolately at a notice saying she had been overpaid in her recent disability checks. Next month, the notice said, the check will be reduced to $405.50.

“I don’t know how the kids are going to eat on it,” she said. “But I’m going to have to figure a way.”

Like scores of others waiting that morning at Share Our Selves, Ray would only be able to get one bag of groceries for the month of October.

Jean Forbath, the director of Share Our Selves who also sits on the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said that of the 18,000 people who seek help each month, the only repeat clients are the homeless--about 4,000 people in September--who are allowed to come once a week.

In the last four years, Forbath said, there has been a substantial increase in people seeking food assistance. But the most dramatic increases have been among the homeless.

In February, 1984, Share Our Selves gave food to 14,900 people, 219 of whom were homeless, Forbath said. For the same month in 1987, the center served 17,900 people, 4,135 of whom were homeless.

Forbath attributed the increase to the lack of affordable housing in the county, something she said forces even many working people to come to Share Our Selves.

“We help plain old poor people, people who work at K mart, making four, five dollars an hour,” she said. “Waitresses at Denny’s, maids in hotels, gardeners. These people, they really work hard. But they make too much for food stamps and welfare.”

Most who stood in line with Jeanette Ray refused to talk about their plight. Asked why they were at Share Our Selves, they looked away in embarrassment, ashamed of having to stand in line for a bag of food.

That sense of shame has kept some people away from their agencies, food providers say.

Connie Jones, director of the Southwest Community Center in Santa Ana, said she often has to encourage women with small children to accept food baskets.

“Pride keeps some people from coming,” Jones said. “I try to stress to the ladies that pride has to be knocked down for the sake of the kids.”

Shirley Lewis, 51, rested her cane against a picnic table outside the Salvation Army in Anaheim and watched as a group of young women with children and a few elderly men collected cans of food from a nearby table.

“Most of us don’t want to come. . . ,” Lewis said.

For the past two years, Lewis said, she has been unable to work because of a crippling bone disease. She owns a mobile home in Anaheim and a car, and those assets have prevented her from qualifying to receive welfare.

As a result, she said, she lives on $70 a week in worker’s compensation, what little she can earn performing odd jobs for friends, and occasional assistance from her oldest daughter.

Lewis said she declared bankruptcy to keep her creditors at bay, but that has not helped her pay the trailer space rent of $300 a month, which is about to go up.

Lewis, who said she used to earn $500 a week driving a limousine, must now depend on food handouts from her church and the local Salvation Army, something she never could have imagined two years ago.

“It tears your guts out,” she said. “It’s a very humbling experience to have to surrender everything--to have to lean on somebody else to keep from going hungry.”

Yet hunger may be the simplest-to-solve problem faced by poor people, say poverty agency officials. Food bank director Harney noted that an estimated 30 million pounds of food is wasted each year in Orange County alone.

But appeals to feed the hungry usually generate a warm response from the public, especially as the holiday season approaches.

“It’s the easiest thing to solve, much easier than housing,” Forbath said. “I don’t know what it is, the Lady Bountiful instinct comes out in us when we think about food.”

Certainly for Veronica Alcantar, Jesus Gonzalez and their two children, hunger is the least of their problems. If the couple does not find work soon, they risk losing their one-room apartment in Santa Ana.

Alcantar, a legal resident, said she has had trouble finding work because she does not speak English. Gonzalez said he cannot find work because his amnesty application has not been processed and he doesn’t have the necessary papers to give prospective employers.

“We feel bad because we don’t have work right now,” Alcantar said through a translator. “We don’t know what to do.”

DONATION SITES FOR ORANGE COUNTY HUNGER WEEK, OCT. 16-22:

Canned goods, dried foods and personal items such as soap, shampoo and toothbrushes may be donated at the following places this week:

Schools

Irvine High School

4321 Walnut Ave., Irvine

Woodbridge High School

2 Meadowbrook, Irvine

Carden School of Fountain Valley

10460 Slater Ave., Fountain Valley

Villa Park High School

18042 Taft Ave., Villa Park

Churches

2nd Baptist Church of Santa Ana

1915 W. McFadden Ave., Santa Ana

University United Methodist Church

18422 Culver Drive, Irvine

Orange First Presbyterian Church

191 N. Orange St., Orange

Companies

Beckman Industries

4141 Palm St., Fullerton

BFM Energy

2040 E. Dyer Road, Santa Ana

Dave Systems

1450 E. 17th St., Santa Ana

Independence Savings & Loan

230 E. Chapman Ave., Orange

Irvine Co.

550 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach

Gary Peters/Chiropractor

17672 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach

Vard Newport

3324 W. Warner Ave., Santa Ana

FHP Anaheim Medical Center

1236 N. Magnolia Ave., Anaheim

FHP Anaheim Senior Center

1200 N. Magnolia Ave., Anaheim

FHP Hospital

9920 Talbert Ave., Fountain Valley

FHP Fountain Valley Medical Center

9930 Talbert Ave., Fountain Valley

FHP Huntington Beach Senior Center

19066 Magnolia Ave., Huntington Beach

FHP Laguna Hills Senior Center

22932 Alcalde Drive, Laguna Hills

FHP Laguna Hills Medical Center

22932 Alcalde Drive, Laguna Hills

FHP Tustin Medical Center

1950 E. 17th St., Ste. 300, Santa Ana

FHP Santa Ana Medical Center

1002 N. Fairview St., Santa Ana

Stores

Alpha Beta

18040 Culver Drive, Irvine

Lucky

5402 Walnut Ave., Irvine

Price Savers Wholesale Warehouse

2200 Barranca Parkway, Irvine

Ralphs

14400 Culver Drive, Irvine

Vons

4800 Irvine Blvd., Irvine

Vons

4730 Barranca Parkway, Irvine