Dispatches: Squeezed from both sides

By Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
   The economic news has not been great.
   The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been in free-fall. Major investment firms have disintegrated. Retail sales were down drastically in September. Nearly 160,000 jobs were eliminated in September and, as CNN reported last week, unemployment is at a seven-year high while “the number of people who have settled for part-time work or given up on finding a job altogether is the worst it’s been in over 14 years.”
   So it is no surprise that the township’s Department of Social Services is serving an increasing number of local residents in need.
   According to LouAnne Wolf, social services director, the department’s food pantry provided food for 40.5 percent more families through the first nine months of the year than last year — a shocking 87 more families between January and September. Plus, over the last three months, the average number of families has ballooned by 33 percent, from 30.1 families per month to 40.3 per month.
   It’s not just the food pantry that has been hit hard. The township’s Human Intervention Trust Fund, which assists people with monthly bills and other necessary expenses like rent and utilities, has provided about $10,000 more in aid during the first nine months of 2008 than in 2007 — handing out $57,184 from the trust fund through the September this year compared with $47,000 during the same period in 2007. Most of that money, Ms. Wolf says, goes to utility bills.
   And it has ran through the $10,000 Salvation Army fund it administers to cover emergency expenses, spending $9,800 through Tuesday. That leaves $200 available for the rest of the year. In 2007, the township spent $9,200 for the full year.
   South Brunswick’s experience is not unusual. According to the Community FoodBank of NJ, which works with food banks and soup kitchens across the northern portion of the state, there has been “a 20 percent increase this year in the number of people seeking food assistance” at the agencies it serves. “Some agencies in especially hard-hit areas report a 30 percent spike in need,” the organization says. “Similar data is being seen at food banks all over the country.”
   The problem is that, when times are tough like this, it not only increases need but makes it more difficult for many who would like to contribute to open their cupboards and give.
   So pantries like South Brunswick’s and soup kitchens like Elijah’s Promise in New Brunswick find themselves squeezed from both sides.
   This squeeze demonstrates the problems with relying on voluntary agencies like food banks and soup kitchens to act as our safety net during times of economic strife. It is during times of economic upheaval, times when more and more of us face what advocates call “food insecurity,” when voluntary efforts become difficult, when strains are placed on the larger community as neighbors are looking at their own budgets with an eye toward cutting back.
   What gets cut back, unfortunately, tends to be the help they can give to others — not because of any animus, but because they just don’t have the extra money to help their neighbors.
   It is at a time of crisis, however, when community is most important. Given that government is the institutional manifestation of community, it is government that has to step up and provide the safety net – by funding anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs, by creating jobs through public investment in infrastructure, etc.
   In the meantime, the pantry needs the community’s help now. One way to pitch in, without creating personal hardships, is to buy one extra food item every week — a can of soup, a box of pasta, a jar of sauce – and bring it to the pantry. That could generate a lot of food donations without much pain.
   To donate food, bring items to Social Services in the lower level of the Municipal Building on Ridge Road in Monmouth Junction. The office is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Donations can be made at any time in a bin outside the department’s office.
   To donate to the Human Intervention Trust Fund can do so by making out a check to the Human Intervention Trust Fund, and mailing it to South Brunswick Township, P.O. Box 190 Monmouth Junction, N.J. 08852, attention: Social Services.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be e-mailed by clicking here. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.