Texas food bank provides relief as more families struggle to afford groceries

Stubbornly high food prices are compounding the problems of hunger and food scarcity across America, as people face tough choices in order to stretch their budgets to cover basic necessities like housing and child care. In one Texas community, residents are stepping up to help neighbors in need. Austin PBS’ Blair Waltman-Alexin and Austin Vida’s Isadora Day report.
John Yang:
Across America, stubbornly high food prices are compounding the problems of hunger and food scarcity. People are facing tough choices in order to stretch their budgets to cover basics like housing and childcare. Blair Waltman-Alexin of Austin PBS and Isadora Day with Austin Vita look at how residents in one community are stepping up to help neighbors in need.
David Horning, Executive Director, Impact Now Dove Springs:
Whew, it’s hot. See I ran everything as a volunteer for the first about eight years and we just got really, really busy. So now this is actually my full time job.
I’m David Horning. I am the executive director at Impact now Dove Springs. We’re the only food distribution that I know of in Dove Springs. That’s like a permanent location.
I’m here six days a week. On Tuesdays in the mornings we pack all of our shelf stable food. So we’re packing cans, we’re packing rice, we’re packing beans. We’re usually packing about 220 bags.
On Fridays we pick up about 7,000 pounds of food from the food bank. Saturday morning we get here at 7:45. We pack all of our fresh and frozen foods.
Woman:
Two in the backseat, guys.
David Horning:
And then at 9:00 a.m. we open and we start distributing. How many families? Four or three.
Man:
Everybody’s family.
David Horning:
For a long time, I would say probably five or six years, were serving an average of 50 families a week. Ten years later serving about 220 families a week. The rising cost of things has I think brought more and more families to us.
Yessenia, Food Bank Attendee:
It brings a lot into our home. It’s a little bit, as we say in Venezuela, a little bit that gives. So this is something to move us forward because I mean, the little money that comes into our home is not enough.
David Horning:
Definitely hear lots of stories of families struggling to buy food.
Sari Vatske, Central Texas Food Bank:
Texas is now the second highest state in the country for food insecurity. We’re not insulated from the costs that other people are experiencing as well. We’re spending about $1.1 million a month to purchase food, which is just really not sustainable.
Unfortunately, we are anticipating this to continue. Last year we estimated about 178,000 people were food insecure. And this year we’re anticipating about 208,000. And that’s just in Travis County alone.
David Horning:
I feel like things are going to continue to increase. I haven’t seen it stop yet. But giving them food to help feed their families is kind of what keeps me going.
I do. I know who you are.
The people that we serve are just normal people. They have kids, they have families, they have loved ones. They just want to eat and be healthy. And a lot of them also want to give back.
Woman:
I’m a great staffer.
Man:
Excuse me.
David Horning:
I would probably say 70 percent of the volunteers that we have were previously in line. They realized that there was a need for support, so they offered to help. They might still be getting food from us, but they wanted to do more themselves. We love Dove Springs and we love helping people.