Tucson economic misery stressing relief agencies
By Patty Machelor
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
"I've been involved in food banking for 16 years and I've never seen anything like this, outside of a natural disaster like (hurricanes) Katrina or Rita."
William Carnegie, CEO, Tucson Community Food Bank
TO GET HELP
Arizona has an online site called Arizona 2-1-1 Online for people facing economic distress. Log on at www.az211.gov/ index.php
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Susan Jean's action echoes of the Great Depression.
When she can, the retired Tucsonan hangs a small bag of food on a fencepost near her home at East Grant and North Country Club roads. Within an hour or two, she said, the bag is gone.
Faith leaders and social- service workers say they have never seen so many people hungry and struggling in Tucson.
Lines have been so long at the Tucson Community Food Bank that CEO William Carnegie said that if he squints and imagines a black-and-white image, it could be a Great Depression photo.
St. Vincent de Paul can't keep up with the demand, and unemployment services are booming.
Some elderly residents are living in cold houses as they struggle to stretch limited funds, while their younger neighbors search for jobs.
Jean herself receives assistance for food. She is also resourceful with what she has, and, as an avid gardener, enjoys swapping vegetables with friends. She recently built a chicken coop using discarded scrap lumber.
But Jean recognizes the need is great among so many, and so she shares what she doesn't need or use, one small bag at a time.
Memories of Great Depression
Jeanne Connell remembers the Great Depression and her grandmother allowing a homeless family to live for free in a tiny house behind their home in Oklahoma.
"During that time, we always had people at our back door asking if they could sweep our yard. My grandmother, somehow or another, would find a way to feed them," she said.
Connell, 78, has lived in Tucson since 1987 and is retired from a variety of career jobs. She is grateful to live for free in a condominium a relative paid for, but she said money is still very tight. She's had thyroid cancer, and her hospital bills exceed $18,000.
It's reminiscent of her father's plight when she was little, she said. Connell's mother died of pneumonia when she was 3, and her father, a civil engineer, couldn't pay the hospital bills, either.
Connell finds the economy today worse than those years when she was very young.
"Even though I was a little girl, I still got the feeling that people really wanted to help each other, but I don't get that feeling now, that feeling of togetherness, of people really coming together to help people," she said.
Diana Edwards, program director for the Older Americans Act with the Pima Council on Aging, said that in her 28 years with the agency, the need among area seniors is the worst it's ever been.
Calls for assistance between July 1 and the end of October this year were double what they were at the same time last year.
The greatest increase has been from seniors who cannot afford to pay their property taxes, Edwards said. Other calls are from people who cannot afford their utilities.
"People have very, very tough decisions to make," she said. "Do I buy food, or do I pay my property taxes?"
Sharp rise in food stamps
Jenny Montaño's family welcomed an unplanned baby boy earlier this year, just months before the economy took its worst turn. In September, they qualified for food stamps for the first time.
Montaño, 33, said that though her husband has a good job in construction, it doesn't pay enough now to cover food, gasoline and the mortgage on their Southwest Side home for two adults and five children.
At the end of September, 685,906 people in Arizona were receiving food stamps, with Pima County accounting for 113,296 of those recipients.
In 2007, there were 575,269 people in Arizona using food stamps, with 96,422 in Pima County.
The increase is dramatic, said Marco Liu, program administrator for family assistance with the Arizona Department of Economic Security.
"We're close to the top in the nation in terms of food-stamp-participation growth," he said.
Even so, Liu said approximately 44 percent of Arizona's families that are eligible have not applied. The elderly are a hard population to reach, he said, and many would benefit from the assistance now who wouldn't have qualified a year ago.
According to federal guidelines, a family of four with a gross income at or below $2,297 per month qualifies for food stamps.
"A large number of people who are not participating are working and believe that because they are working, they won't qualify," he said.
"It hurts"
Tucsonans John Ramirez and his wife were in Thailand when the stock market crashed.
"We were watching the stocks and watching the crash and, in fact, we were two days late to get back. By that time, we had lost large amounts of money," Ramirez said.
"It hurts. You've worked years for this money and invested it into stocks, and then, to watch it disappear, it's disheartening."
Ramirez has a master's degree and worked for years as a rehabilitation specialist for the blind. He's also a cancer survivor who decided to take the trip abroad after a false alarm that the cancer had returned.
"My wife and I said, 'Life is really short. Let's go see the world while we can,' " said Ramirez, 47.
After nearly a year abroad, Ramirez has been back in the United States less than two months. With some of their savings still intact, Ramirez said they are caught between having just enough not to qualify for assistance, but not enough to live for long without work.
He's looking for work just about anywhere now, while he searches for a job in his field.
Pima County One Stop
Jim Mize manages the employee outreach team for Pima County One Stop, which provides aid to people who have been laid off, as well as employers who plan to lay off workers.
In October, between the One Stop's two sites, there were more than 6,000 client visits, Mize said. In October 2007, One Stop saw around 3,200 clients. "At two visits per person, that's still double what it was last year," he said.
Another change this year is the type of client, he said. Many of the clients last year were hard to place in new jobs, he said, but this year One Stop is seeing a lot more professionals who can't find work.
Unemployment in Pima County went up to 5.8 percent in October, compared with 5.6 percent in September, said Pati Urias, spokeswoman for the Arizona Commerce Department. Statewide, the rate is 6.1 percent, a 2 percent increase from last year.
Michelle Medlin, 49, worked for Raytheon as a manufacturing engineer until a few years ago, when the company moved the operation she'd been working on to Massachusetts.
Medlin, who has an engineering degree from UCLA, opted not to go, mostly because she didn't want to leave Tucson. She took a job with Prototron Circuits, but she was laid off in July.
"Now it's really hard," she said. "I've been looking and am even willing to relocate."
At 48, Pat Crutcher lost her job at the beginning of September after nearly 20 years as a caseworker in welfare-to-work programs for the state and a company.
She said the loss of income has been difficult. Her husband is now working overtime whenever he can, and she is looking into a human-resources program at Pima Community College. They have a son at home and one in college to support.
"I've been looking for a job for the last 2 1/2 months," she said. "It's not been good."
Fear seen in faith community
Rabbi Robert Eisen of Congregation Anshei Israel said he has seen changes in his faith community. People are hurting financially, he said, but there's more to it than that.
"People are scared. They are worried and they are concerned and they want to find something to give them a little strength to get them through what's going on," he said.
"I know people who have not taken any kind of hit, so to speak, and they're looking out their windows and saying, 'There, but for the grace of God, go I.' "
The Rev. Dan Hurlbert of the East Side's Desert Skies United Methodist Church said the church's flea market last month was telling.
"Normally, at the end of the sale, we have a pretty vast quantity of stuff that we give away to Goodwill. This year, we sold every single thing we had, and an hour before the sale was over, all of the clothes were gone," he said.
The church also helps feed 300 low-income schoolchildren on weekends through its snack-pack program.
"We've seen that number go up steadily over the last 18 months. Even though we haven't taken on more schools, we're up 10 to 15 percent," he said.
It's difficult to know that some of the agencies that are there to help people can barely keep up, said Maqsood Ahmad of the Islamic Center of Tucson. He was distressed to hear the Tucson Community Food Bank would not be providing holiday baskets this year, for example.
"This is really sad. I was trying to figure out, if they have taken a hit, where these people will turn to," he said.
"We've got a real serious issue here in Tucson."
A run on Food Bank
Carnegie, the Food Bank's CEO, said he has never seen the need so great.
"On any given day, there are 50 to 100 people waiting outside for our doors to open," he said of its center at 3003 S. Country Club Road.
"I've been involved in food banking for 16 years and I've never seen anything like this outside of a natural disaster like (hurricanes) Katrina or Rita."
There were 20,266 family food boxes distributed in October, an increase of 48 percent over the previous year. Donations are down about 2 percent.
To cope, Carnegie said the Food Bank is making some changes.
Beginning in 2009, it will distribute one instead of two emergency food boxes each month. About 5,000 families rely on the second box, he said, but the Food Bank is operating at capacity and expects another increase in demand in January, February and March.
It also will not distribute holiday food boxes this year, which should save it close to $300,000. Last year, it gave out 20,000 holiday boxes in November and December.
To help compensate, though, the Food Bank will include a holiday ham in December's regular family food boxes.
"If everyone were to donate a can or a dollar, or both, it would go so far," said Jack Parris, the agency's public relations manager. "For every dollar we receive, we can leverage that into $9 worth of food."
It's tough at soup kitchen
Brian Flagg, who oversees the Casa Maria Soup Kitchen, is also searching for dollars. Flagg has been running out of food for the family lunch bags.
At the end of October, he served what he thinks was a record: 670 bag lunches and 225 family bags from his little operation at East 25th Street and South Third Avenue.
He said some of the people who come by for coffee between 6:30 and 8 a.m. have been awake since 3 a.m., when they again tried and failed to get a day-labor job.
"I've been here since 1983 and this is the worst that I've ever seen it," he said. "The ones the economy is hurting first and foremost are the families that are on the verge of being homeless."
Carmen Simbari, diocesan president of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for Southern Arizona, said the most difficult thing is turning people away due to lack of resources. Simbari is seeing a lot of requests for help with rent and utilities.
"It's just kind of overwhelming," he said. "Primarily, we help with food, and we're running out of food fast."
Professionals feeling the pinch
Like Flagg, Libby Wright is struggling with funds and resources for her Giving Tree Outreach Program.
"We're seeing people like we've never seen before," said Wright. "Normally, the poor have been poor and they don't have a high level of education. Now we're seeing people who are educated, who had jobs and homes and have lost their homes."
Wright said Giving Tree is providing beds for more than 100 people right now.
"And we're seeing a lot of elderly people. It's not like they can go out and get a job. Some of these people are in their 80s," she said. "They're regular people who can't afford their homes."
The Giving Tree meal program offered on Thursdays and Saturdays is full of people, including numerous children. Meals are distributed in an old parking lot along East 22nd Street near South Swan Road,
"Last year at this time, we were feeding about 500 people a week, and this year we're feeding more than 1,000," she said. "If regular people are feeling this, you can imagine how it is for people who have been poor all along."
The hardest thing, she said, is turning away people who are hungry.
"You should see them," said Wright, who has been running this program for 20 years. "I can't even look at their faces."
On StarNet: Do you want to donate to a charity but don't know which one? Visit go.azstarnet.com/ threewishes to see a list of local charities looking for help.
"I've been involved in food banking for 16 years and I've never seen anything like this, outside of a natural disaster like (hurricanes) Katrina or Rita."
William Carnegie, CEO, Tucson Community Food Bank
TO GET HELP
Arizona has an online site called Arizona 2-1-1 Online for people facing economic distress. Log on at www.az211.gov/ index.php
● Contact reporter Patty Machelor at 235-0308 or pmachelor@azstarnet.com.
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