Food pantries brace for growing demand this holiday season

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This time last year, Gene Scanlon, food coordinator at the Bridgehampton Community Food Pantry, ordered a combined 24 turkeys and hams for needy families in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack.

This year, the requests have more than doubled. The pantry had to buy 30 turkeys and 28 hams to give out on Wednesday, Mr. Scanlon said, just to keep up with the Thanksgiving demand.

“We’re doing it now,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen at Christmas. We may not be able to do it.”

The Bridgehampton pantry is one of a number of food pantries between the Moriches and Montauk now bracing for heavy demand this winter as the ranks of the hungry reach record levels, both nationwide and locally. With the coldest months yet to come, some of them are already seeing demand skyrocket.

The food pantry at Lamb’s Chapel in Center Moriches has been catering to 10 to 20 new families each week in recent weeks, according to Barbara Latsko, the pantry’s director. Last year, the pantry served 655 people in September and 1,100 people in October. This year, the numbers swelled to 835 in September and 1,335 in October. People are coming from as far away as Westhampton, Holbrook and Patchogue, Ms. Latsko said.

At the same time, donations are declining. While she does not have exact figures, Ms. Latsko said recent food drives are not bringing in what they once used to. If things continue this way, she said, the pantry might have to start giving away three days of emergency food to families each Thursday, instead of a week’s worth.

“If worse comes to worse, we’ll have to ration,” she said.

Since last fall, about 150 new families have started coming to the food pantry that is run by Human Resources of the Hamptons, a relief organization based in Southampton Village, according to Executive Director Mary Ann Tupper. The organization typically offers assistance to about 100 families per week.

Those families will benefit from a joint fund-raising effort that is being coordinated by Human Resources of the Hamptons and The Press News Group. As of earlier this week, readers of The Press newspapers have donated more than $3,000 to the organization—enough money to purchase about 150 turkey dinners, according to Ms. Tupper.

But the demand for food does not go away after Thanksgiving. “Last year at Christmastime was the first time ever that I ran out of food boxes on the floor,” she said. Come this Christmas season, Ms. Tupper said she anticipates needing 500 turkeys to give away. At the same time, donations are down about a third since last year, she said.

“Some who have been donors are now calling up asking if they can have a turkey for Christmas or a turkey for Thanksgiving,” she said. “That’s a very humbling experience.”

At the Springs Community Food Pantry in Springs, Dru Raley, the facility’s director, is seeing foot traffic about 40 percent higher than it was last year. At this time last year, the pantry served about 70 people a week. On Wednesday, November 11, it served 98 people. Based on the usual arc of the year, she said she anticipates well over 100 people a week come the dead of winter.

Day laborers make up a large percentage of the Springs Community Food Pantry’s patrons, according to Ms. Raley. She said she attributes the heavy demand this fall, in part, to some lagging industries on Long Island. Laborers who could find work into the fall and winter in better years are now struggling to provide for themselves and their families.

“The landscaping business was very slow this summer, people were laid off early,” she said. “The building trades were practically zero, a lot of them.”

Pantries in the area are feeling the pinch of statewide and nationwide trends. Seventeen million households in the United States, or 14.6 percent of families, had trouble putting food on their tables in 2008, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released earlier this month, the highest since the department started keeping track of what it calls “food security” in 1995. New York State’s unemployment rate was 8.9 percent in September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, suggesting that even more families could be leaning on food pantries to put dinner on their tables next year.

“We’re seeing a lot of families where one or even both parents have been laid off,” said Kathleen Johnson, the director of the Moriches Community Center in Center Moriches. The center’s food pantry works with the Center Moriches School District to give food to district families who are in need.

Economic ills are also causing donations of food and funds to drop at some pantries. Island Harvest, a relief organization based in Mineola that supplies a number of area pantries, reported a 10-percent decrease in overall food donations this year.