Charity Losing Ground to Needs of Hungry, Homeless

Calling for more federal assistance in fighting poverty, the president of Catholic Charities USA said Monday that his organization has been overwhelmed with people “who need food or shelter just to live another day.”

Catholic Charities, the nation’s largest non-government social service agency, increased its volunteer force from 23,000 in 1980 to nearly 200,000 in 1990, said Father Thomas J. Harvey at a Monday news conference outside a food pantry in Van Nuys.

Yet, Harvey said, his organization is losing ground.

“The problems have gotten worse,” the priest said, even though Catholic Charities spent more than $1.6 billion last year.

About 62% of the people who asked Catholic Charities centers for help last year requested emergency food or shelter, compared to only 23% who did so in 1980, Harvey said. A decade ago, Catholic Charities spent most of its money and time counseling families in trouble, helping refugees and aiding the elderly.

“We are now forced to pour our resources into helping people survive in poverty rather than to help them overcome poverty,” the priest said.

The figures were released during Catholic Charities’ five-day national convention, which ended Monday at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton.

The national survey also showed that in 1990 Catholic Charities spent $1.6 billion on 8 million people, most of them non-Catholics and 20% of them eking out an existence in California. But because the San Francisco and San Diego dioceses did not report their figures in time, the percentage of help given to Californians should be higher, Harvey said.

Harvey said that Catholic Charities, the Alexandria, Va.-based organization uniting diocesan-level social service agencies, is urging congressional passage of the Mickey Leland Child Hunger Relief bill, a measure that would increase government food stamp benefits. He said that the bill, headed for the House Agriculture Committee, may pass “but with no money attached to it.”

Calling for a “peace dividend” from the government, Harvey mocked the Bush Administration’s request to Congress for continued production of 30 Stealth bombers, asking, “Who are we going to bomb?”

Harvey spoke to reporters outside the Catholic-run Loaves and Fishes food pantry in Van Nuys. From those offices, located behind an auto parts store, Catholic Charities distributes a small amount of food to needy families once every two months.

The center helped 12,000 people last year, said Moeed N. Kahn, director for the San Fernando Pastoral Region of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. “Thirty-five percent of the people we help are homeless,” Kahn said. Many others are struggling on minimal incomes, he said.

At the pantry Monday, ex-truck driver John Guerino, 42, of Reseda said he receives federal food stamps to feed three young children.

“We get food stamps, but we still run out,” he said. “If it wasn’t for this food bank, I don’t know how we’d live.”