For the 626,000 people who received emergency food supplies in Oregon last year, hunger is tangible. It is a wolf howling angry at the door, gnawing at the gut and wearing on the mind. It keeps parents up at night and sends sunken-eyed children out the door in the morning with empty stomachs.
Oregon has the highest rate of hunger in the U.S., nearly twice the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FOOD for Lane County, a division of the Oregon Food Network, distributed 6 million pounds of food last year, up from 4 million pounds in 1999.
Executive Director of FOOD for Lane County Caroline Frengle said the number of people needing emergency services will continue to rise as the economy declines and unemployment numbers grow.
To accommodate this increasing need for services, FOOD for Lane County opened The Dining Room, a community dinner program at the former Govinda’s this past winter. The Dining Room was intended to be a safe haven for families to enjoy a warm meal. However, when more single men started showing up, the number of families eating meals declined. After businesses and neighbors complained about the behavior of a few of the men at the restaurant, FOOD for Lane County directors made the decision to temporarily close the site and restructure the program.
“Capacity became a problem,” Communications Director for FOOD for Lane County Dana Turell said. “We were at 180 in a room that seats about 90. If we were going to recruit the families back to the program, we would have gone way beyond what the building could accommodate.”
When The Dining Room reopens later this month, services will be available only to families.
“We’re going to work on some outreach efforts,” Turell said. “We’re working with churches and non-profits … hopefully we can identify another community group to continue serving singles.”
The Eugene Mission is one of the few programs in Lane County that caters to single individuals. Because the Mission does not rely on state funding, it is also one of the few services unaffected by the failure of Ballot Measure 28 and statewide budget cuts.
According to Assistant Director for the Eugene Mission Lynn Antis, the Mission provided about 585 meals a day in January. Meals are free and open to people staying on site as well as to “walk-ins.”
The mission has separate dining and sleeping facilities for men and women. Antis said that separating the men and the women can help to stop problems before they begin.
“We learned some time ago that it is very wise to separate men and women,” he said. “When you have a clientele of homeless men you’re going to have some problem issues … if they start playing boyfriend-girlfriend you create a bigger problem than you had before.”
But Elizabeth Linbloom, the self-sufficiency manager for the Lane County Department of Human Services, said that solving the hunger problem is not as simple as separating single men from women and children.
“It’s a huge problem,” she said. “Funds to support programs and people have decreased, but the number of people who are hungry is increasing. The county is running out of resources to support these programs.”
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