Rising prices feed a surge at food banks

Steven James, 43, works in finance, has multiple cellphones clipped to his belt and projects the air of a hardworking, successful sort of guy. And yet there he was last week, buying day-old bread at the Oroweat thrift store in South Pasadena.

“Food’s just so expensive,” James said. “It’s going up faster than salaries.” He said he now seeks bargains like day-old bread wherever he can find them.

It seems as if the cost of everything is outpacing people’s pay these days. Gas, the rent, utility bills -- and now food.

According to the Labor Department, the average cost of groceries is climbing at an annual rate of about 5%, the sharpest increase in 18 years. Average weekly earnings are rising at an annual rate of 3.3%.

This disparity has resulted in significantly higher customer traffic at bakery thrift outlets, employees say, as well as a surge in people turning to food banks.

“It’s an alarming situation,” said Michael Flood, chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which distributes free groceries to about 600,000 people countywide via a network of 875 religious entities and nonprofit groups. “The trends are not good.”

The number of people arriving at food pantries is up as much as 10% over the last few months from a year earlier, he said.

Flood noted that other necessities -- gas, rent, utilities -- typically offer no price breaks. So after working-class families pay fixed expenses, that leaves whatever is left for food. And these days, that’s often not enough.

Flood said a particularly troubling trend was that more people are showing up at food banks who don’t fit the usual profile of lower-income families trying to make ends meet.

He said free groceries are now being sought by middle-class people who may have lost their jobs or experienced some other economic upheaval.

“We’re worried,” Flood said. “We don’t necessarily have the supply of food to handle this increase.”

He said donations were still coming from supermarkets, restaurants and other facets of the food industry. But supplies from the Department of Agriculture are down as much as 60% because the government, like consumers, can’t afford to buy as much food as it once could, and because food stockpiles have fallen.

The food bank estimates that more than 1 million L.A. County residents, or about 10% of the population, can be categorized as “food insecure” -- lacking regular access to sufficient amounts of food.

At food pantries throughout the region, I found staffers and volunteers who confirmed Flood’s observation that “clients” increasingly include middle-class people.

At the Agape Foundation Against Domestic Violence in South Central L.A., Executive Director Olive Walker said the number of people served by the organization’s food pantry had risen 60% since the beginning of the year, from about 1,000 a month to 1,600.

“I’ve never seen it this bad before,” she said. “People start lining up at the door before we open.”

Sadie Cerda, who runs the food pantry at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Culver City, said she was seeing as many as 700 people stopping by each month for free food, up about 20% since last year.

“If you’re making $2,000 or $3,000 a month, how can you afford to eat?” she asked. “For a lot of people, you’re either going to have a roof over your head or food. Not both.”

For many people, the biggest blow right now is coming at the gas pump, with a gallon of regular unleaded hovering around $4 all around Southern California.

Here’s a thought: How about if oil companies donated gas cards worth a few gallons of fuel to food banks? They could be included in people’s grocery bags to help offset the cost of driving to and from the food pantry.

If anyone could do this, it would be our friends at Exxon Mobil, the world’s biggest oil company. Last year, Exxon pocketed $40.6 billion in profit -- the largest amount ever by any company.

Beth Snyder, an Exxon spokeswoman, said thanks but no thanks when I shared my idea. “We prefer to provide funding to organizations and let them decide how best to meet their needs.”

I suppose that when you’ve got people spending at least $40 to fill their tanks, the last thing you want is to start giving gas away for free. You’d hate to send a message that, I don’t know, people are being gouged at the pump.

Behind the Oroweat thrift store, I found Gregory Sparks, 48, loading a big white truck with loaves of bread too old to be sold in the day-old bread store. He’d be taking them to the Los Angeles Mission on skid row, which would serve them to the truly down-and-out.

Sparks said he works two jobs to afford food and other necessities for his family, and usually gets by on just a few hours of sleep each night. So far, his two kids haven’t known hunger.

“I do the best I can,” he said.

If only that was still good enough.

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Consumer Confidential runs Wednesdays and Sundays. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.