SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Food Bank and food pantries are seeing an increase in demand as schools let out and we head into the summer months.
Ginette Bott, the president and CEO of the Utah Food Bank, says 289,000 Utahns are challenged when it comes to where they will get their next meal. That includes 1 in 9 Utah children.
According to the Utah Food Bank Facebook page, they are anticipating this summer will be one of the hardest for those experiencing hunger. They said they are seeing a 50% increase in pantry visitors since the March expiration of supplemental SNAP benefits that were in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Some of the dollars were subtracted from monthly giving for SNAP, those families have seen a loss in the benefits they've experienced through COVID," said Bott. "I've heard incidences where individual people have gone from a $90 snap benefit to $13 a month."
Bott says the summer is a time when donations tend to decrease. She says as families vacation and spend time with their kids, they sometimes forget to donate or volunteer.
Earlier this month, the Utah Food Bank asked residents across the state to help "Stamp Out Hunger" by filling bags with non-perishable food and leaving it near their mailbox. It was part of the 31st year of the food drive.
Bott says preliminary numbers show donations were much lower than any of the other years they've seen before.
"We're down about a third from where we were in previous years," said Bott.
Bott said those numbers vary in different areas across the state, but looking at the two warehouses in Salt Lake and St. George, they had lower numbers. She says numbers were higher in areas like Spanish Fork, Orem and American Fork.
Donations from the drive helped stock the shelves at the two food pantries from the Crossroads Urban Center. Bill Tibbitts, the deputy executive director of the center, says the high demand had them inching closer to a situation they had never reached before.
"I've been here over 20 years and we've come the closest to having to turn people away that we ever have during those 20 years, two weeks ago," he said.
Tibbitts said their pantries have been serving about 300 people per day.
"We've been here since 1966, so this is the most people we've served per day ever during that entire time," said Tibbitts. "We have been serving twice as many people this year as we did last year during the first four months of the year."
He says the last time he saw the demand like this was back in 2009 when the country was in a recession.
"To have this level of need, it's scary to think how bad things could get if we start to see things slow down," said Tibbitts.
The Utah Food Bank is responsible for the entire state of Utah, with service facilities in all 29 counties.
Bott says they work with their peers in the Feeding America Network when it comes to exchanging inventory and distribution. As part of that entity, Bott says, their responsibility goes out to about 250 partner agencies across the state, which include brick-and-mortar pantries and soup kitchens.
Donations to the Utah Food Bank can be made HERE, as well as to the Crossroads Urban Center HERE.
