Food Assistance Reportedly Up

It seems more peo­ple are now turn­ing to food pantries for assis­tance. Com­mu­nity Com­pas­sion, which nor­mally helps about 100 fam­i­lies monthly, reports that begin­ning back in Novem­ber, they started see­ing about 20 new fam­i­lies a month.

And what is even more dis­turb­ing, is the fact that these new fam­i­lies are not elderly folks on fixed incomes. They are younger peo­ple who have never turned to a food pantry before.

They say they are now aver­ag­ing about ten new clients monthly, with Open Hands Car­ing Hearts in Bryan report­ing 25 new clients a month since Novem­ber, and Help­ing Hands in Mont­pe­lier see­ing an increase of about a dozen new clients a month dur­ing the same period.

All area food pantries say the num­ber of senior cit­i­zens get­ting assis­tance has remained pretty much the same dur­ing the same time period.

They say the increase is mainly in young vet­er­ans and young retirees. Now, all area food pantries say they are tak­ing steps to increase the assis­tance that they pro­vide on a monthly basis to meet the new, higher demand.