Clallam County’s largest community food banks are seeing a radical rise in the hungry faces of harsh economic times, with Port Angeles and Sequim hardest hit.
“We’re double,” Josie Gilbeck, Port Angeles Food Bank executive director, said bluntly last week, citing her estimated comparison this year to the same period in 2009.
The week before last, the facility at 402 Valley St. served 983 families, she said, or about 8,000 individuals.
“We have a request for 9,000 [Thanksgiving] turkey boxes for Clallam County,” she added.
Who are the hungry people that Gilbeck and her 14 regular volunteers serve?
“It’s Grandma who lost her home to foreclosure,” she said. “It’s Mom and a Dad who lost their jobs.”
The Port Angeles Food Bank, she said, also ships food to other agencies, including the Salvation Army, the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and Serenity House homeless shelter — wherever there is need.
Sequim Food Bank is also experiencing the results of higher unemployment.
The latest figures from the state Employment Security Department, released earlier this month, show an 8.8 percent jobless rate in Clallam County and an 8.2 percent rate in Jefferson County.
The Sequim Food Bank’s food output is between 30 percent and 40 percent greater this year than the pre-Thanksgiving period last year.
“We’re serving up to 250 families a week, compared to 160 or 170 last year,” said Stephen Rosales, interim director at Sequim Food Bank, where about 30 volunteers, teens to seniors, lend a helping hand.
“We spend about $90,000 every holiday season,” he added. “This town is so good to the food bank.”
With need significantly going up, Rosales said, “We are seeing a lot more younger people in here, with kids, and that’s gotta be because they are out of work.”
Last year, he said, the Sequim facility produced about 750 turkey baskets for distribution before the holiday. This year, he said, the food bank is planning for up to 1,000.
To the west in Forks, the need is up about 10 percent, and appears to be climbing
From July 1, 2009 to June 30 this year, the Forks Community Food Bank served about 552 families, said food bank volunteer Marilyn Adina.
“This year for the same period until Nov. 18, we already had 426 families and we still have seven months to go,” Adina said.
“We have quite a few new clients that moved here for a job,” but could not find one, she said.
“They have no place to go and have no money.”
Food bank board president Bert Paul said Forks might not be as hard hit because many families and individuals have moved away, possibly seeking work elsewhere.
The food bank is well stocked with produce, Paul said, after a crew of Forks Lions Club volunteers in October made their 30th annual trip to Quincy, trucking two load log trucks and exchanging firewood for produce in that community.
“There is a lot of need, but we seem to be meeting the need in our community, which is good,” Paul said, adding that the produce the Lions bring home is shared with food banks in Clallam Bay and LaPush.
Needy Forks-area families have ordered 230 turkey baskets for Thanksgiving, Adina said, “But it seems like we are going to need more.”
Tim Hockett, Olympic Community Action Programs executive director, new, first-time families in the food bank network across the North Olympic Peninsula has gone up about 50 percent.
“We went from 621 houses to 907 households that are new over the year,” said Hockett, who heads the OlyCAP staff of about 300, which are stationed in Port Townsend to Port Angeles offices.
OlyCap is the largest local agency serving the region’s needy.
When unemployment rises from 5 to 10 percent, he said, “there’s actually double the number who are unemployed.”
“This overwhelms almost all the agencies,” he said.
Then there is the persistence of lack of affordable housing, people losing their homes to foreclosure, the unemployed running out of unemployment benefits and the rising cost of health care to consider.
“These are the conditions that the average household can’t bear, so they turn to us for help,” Hockett said.
“It’s like the perfect storm of economic challenges in front of families out there.”
This year, he said, there are about 20 percent more requests for assistance through the Peninsula Daily News Home Fund, which last year generated about $238,000 compared with about $17,000 in 1995, he said.
Expected but unknown state cuts to OlyCAP are another worry, Hockett said.
“What the cuts with governmental funds does is, it just puts more pressure back on the local communities to find a solution.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
