America Letter: Poverty levels in Washington are food for thought

Near the seat of power in the US, one out of every two children is at risk of hunger.

A staggering 680,000 people in the Washington DC metropolitan area, out of a population of four million, are vulnerable to hunger, according to the city's Capital Area Food Bank. That includes 200,000 children. Many live across the Potomac river in the seventh and eighth wards in the Anacostia area in the southeast of the city.

"Washington is really a city of the haves and the have-nots," says Page Dahl Crosland, the food bank's communications director.

“Most visitors to the city do not go to the other side of the river into Anacostia.”

The food bank distributes 35 million pounds of food a year – the equivalent of 27.5 million meals – to 700 food pantries, including 300 in Washington DC, which pass the food on to the hungry.

While these figures appear significant, the food is only getting to 478,000 people, leaving more than 200,000 of those at risk of hunger without food support.

The city’s poverty levels are in line with the average in the country. US census data shows that almost 50 million Americans were living in poverty in 2011, more than 16 per cent of the population.

Located in the north of the city, the food bank also covers areas within the DC metropolitan area, into northern Virginia and counties in Maryland.

Everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to canned goods and even bicycles have been distributed to the poor from the food bank since it was established in 1980.

Last Wednesday afternoon volunteers from the World Bank in central Washington were helping the food bank's staff pack bags of groceries for distribution.

Increasing need
Marian Barton-Peele, the food bank's senior director of partner relations, who liaises with food pantries around the city, says the number of people receiving food has increased three-fold over the past 20 years "because the need has increased and we have done a good job of identifying where the need is".

The typical people in receipt of food parcels are people working two or three jobs “trying to make ends meet”, she says. The average person has a monthly income of $500 and can only afford to pay rent, so they must cut back somewhere.

The food bank is trying to improve the quality of food people eat, showing people how to cook nutritionally and on a budget in a purpose-built training kitchen. There is an urban garden to teach people how to grow vegetables.

Nancy Roman, president and chief executive of the food bank, says the poor in the Washington DC are not just underfed but poorly fed. Many people can only afford fast-food “dollar meals”, which, with their high levels of fat and sugar, lead to an increase in cases of diabetes and heart disease.

Food deserts
Not only do the wards seven and eight have the highest poverty rates in the district of Columbia but they are also home to the city's highest obesity rates and large "food deserts", areas that are poorly served by full-service grocery stores.

In 2010 the two wards had seven supermarkets between them compared with 11 in ward three, the highest- income area of the city, according to anti-hunger group the Food Research and Action Centre.

Over in Anacostia, Hannah Hawkins travels to the Capital Area Food Bank every Tuesday morning. When she returns there are queues of almost 100 people at her centre waiting for food. “I never have enough,” she says.

She feeds hot nutritional meals of vegetables to about 60 children ranging in age from four to 18 after school every day at the Children of Mine Youth Centre she founded and runs.

Each child leaves well fed and with a package of food to keep them going overnight and for their younger siblings. Some of the food includes tomatoes, kale and collard greens grown in the vegetable garden at the back of the centre.

“I have been doing this for 30 years and it is getting worse,” she says, blaming the cuts in the government’s food stamps programme for bringing more young adults through her door.

When she moved into the run-down housing project that is now home to her centre, there were animals living inside and homeless people outside on the back porch. She is trying to raise money to build a new centre where people could sleep overnight.

Many of the elderly people visiting Hawkins’ centre take milk and yoghurt they cannot afford to buy because of the high cost of their medicine.

It is a well-equipped centre but underequipped to deal with the scale of the problem.

“People who are confronted with this don’t believe that in these United States of America we are going through this agony,” she says.