The nightly news brings images of hundreds of cars waiting in line to pick up food items as COVID-19 continues to disrupt normal life across the country.
It is a scene that hasn’t been duplicated in the Golden Triangle. The anticipated crush of demand at soup kitchens and food pantries caused by COVID-19 has yet to materialize.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” said Ann Sparkman, co-president of Loaves and Fishes, which provides free lunches up to five days per week at its Columbus facility. “I’m hoping it’s just because people are staying home and maybe someone is providing meals for them. I hope that’s the case. What I do know is that we’re not serving as many people as we did before (the virus).”
Sparkman estimates Loaves and Fishes is providing about 60 bag lunches per day since closing its kitchen and ending its hot meal service because of the city’s COVID-19 ordinance that went into effect a month ago — which temporarily limited operations at essential businesses and closed businesses deemed non-essential, and banned gatherings of more than 10 people, among other things.
Prior to that, the facility had fed 100 to 150 people daily.
Loaves and Fishes relies on a group of 30 local organizations, primarily churches, who assume responsibility for preparing and serving lunches at least one day per month.
“We have had a few churches who’ve had to drop out,” Sparkman said. “The volunteers they use are older people, and they were just too vulnerable to continue.”
To compensate, other churches had added additional days, Sparkman said.
“Most weeks, we serve at last three or four days per week and a lot of weeks we serve every day, Monday through Friday,” she said.
While the number of meals has gone down, the expense associated with the meals has not, she said.
“I know at St. Paul’s, which is the group I serve with, when we were serving hot meals it cost us $100, maybe $200 to serve meals,” Sparkman said. “Now that we’ve gone to pre-packaged meals, I think the last time it was our turn, we spent more than $400.”
In Starkville, The United Way of North Central Mississippi has been sponsoring food drives to help supply the 15 food pantries it supports.
Joe Schmidt, director of the St. Joseph Catholic Church food pantry, said his group will hold its first distribution since February on Saturday.
“We didn’t distribute (in April) because of the (state) shelter in place regulations,” Schmidt said. “Right now, we’re stocked pretty well, thanks to the work of the United Way. We’ll have 288 bags of food ready to go on Saturday. We’ll give them out until people stop coming in or we run out of food.”
St. Joseph distributes food one Saturday per month. Smith said a typical distribution will provide food for 150 to 180 families.
“We’re prepared to do more than that since we missed last month,” he said.
The threat of COVID-19 has led to a change of strategy at Columbus Community Outreach, which helps provide assistance for low-income and homeless people, said director Glenda Richardson.
“Before this, our approach with homeless people who came to us for help was focused on getting them a hotel room for a night or two until they could find more permanent residences,” Richardson said. “Now, we’re working more with Rapid Rehousing, a national group, that finds long-term housing. This is not new: It’s something we’ve done before, but given the situation, it’s something we’re doing a lot more of now.
“The homeless are more vulnerable because they can’t shelter in place,” she added.
Richardson said her office has put six people through the program in April.
“Before this, we probably would do that many people in two or three months,” she said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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