York County food pantries now face an odd challenge. Why there’s worry ahead.
Pillar organizations that provide food for many in York County find themselves in an unfamiliar role. Apparently there isn’t much need.
Each week Community Cafe head chef Don Murfin sends an update email to his volunteers and supporters. The May 2 version detailed “a most unusual situation” in York, where many people the free meal cafe typically serves informed volunteers they don’t need meals.
Murfin wrote that the reason is part government dollars being distributed, an improving work climate and free lunch programs through area schools. The result is a one-month pause for cafe service in the York area.
“We are not the only organization experiencing this,” Murfin wrote. “The principal food bank in York has their shelves and coolers over loaded with food products and no takers.”
It’s a similar outlook in Clover.
“I think what pantries across the county are experiencing right now is similar,” said Clover Area Assistance Center director Karen van Vierssen. “Not only are agencies seeing a decline in the request for food, but also a decline in the request for financial support.”
In crisis, people think food. People who have it, van Vierssen said, donate. When COVID-19 hit, there were donations. There also were church and government food giveaways, food share programs, little free pantries, increased federal benefits and stimulus checks.
“All made it possible for people to access food in multiple places and in multiple ways, thus decreasing the requests for assistance from the standard food pantry,” van Vierssen said.
It’s similar in Fort Mill, where it’s typically routine for the Fort Mill Care Center to post needed items each month for people to donate.
“We have seen a dramatic downturn in the number of clients coming in for our services,” said care center director Kathryn O’Donnell.
The other part of the equation is, communities like Lake Wylie and Fort Mill have long been known to support their food pantries with donations. That generosity, leaders say, hasn’t stopped.
“Combining this with living in a very generous community creates an abundance of food sitting on our shelves with no one to give it to,” O’Donnell said. “We would love for our clients to continue to come each month for food and save that money for something else they are in need of.”
Conditions will change
Lack of need is a relatively new phenomenon. Agencies moved into “panic mode” at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, van Vierssen said. CAAC only required proof of residency within the Clover School District to offer services, with need so high. The Community Cafe served more than 114,000 meals in 2020, more than 20% of its total food service in more than a decade making meals.
Decreased pantry need may seem like a positive for area communities, but leaders know conditions are likely to shift again.
Groups like Fort Mill Care Center and Clover Area Assistance Center provide financial and other support in addition to food. In early 2020 there was “an almost absolute absence of people requesting financial help,” van Vierssen said, due to eviction moratoriums related to the pandemic. Most of the $120,000 CAAC spent in financial assistance came in the last five months of 2020 when leniency started to end.
Many people didn’t pay utility bills for six months or more, van Vierssen said.
“We anticipate that when the eviction moratorium is lifted, we will see a larger displacement of homes than ever seen previously,” she said. “When people have not paid their rent for months on end, there is not an agency anywhere that has enough money to bail people out of the back rent that has accrued.”
That likely will involve a greater need for food.
So groups continue to serve, and plan.
Some evaluate ways to reopen for in-person clients, or what pandemic-inspired models may continue. Pantries that have served their communities for decades know the need in good times and bad, and how to prepare.
“There is currently a false sense of security due to bill payment leniency, housing moratoriums, stimulus checks, increased unemployment benefits, increased SNAP benefits and increased food availability,” van Vierssen said. “We are working to anticipate the best to worse case scenarios for the months ahead and preparing accordingly.”
