Hungry For Change

By Jennifer Paradis
Homelessness

Jennifer Paradis

The statistics regarding food insecurity in Connecticut are staggering. Feeding America’s 2024 Map the Gap study found that nearly 13 percent of Connecticut households do not have enough food to meet their nutritional needs and do not know where there next meal is coming from. Totaling 470,000 households, this number is up by 90,000 residents and includes a rise in food insecurity amongst children throughout the state.

In 2021, one out of every eight children did not have enough food to eat. As of 2022 (the current data), one of six children is food insecure. What’s even more unsettling is this ratio is one in four for Black and Hispanic Connecticut residents.

The Beth-El Center served more prepared meals in 2023 than in our 40-plus year history, totaling 48,214 meals. This is nearly one meal for every person living in Milford and enough to feed the whole town of Orange for a day. Each year, we see these numbers rise, with no structures in place to turn the tide.

Before we furiously assemble ourselves, organizing food drives, applying to volunteer at our local food pantry and paying for the person behind us in the fast-food drive thru, I implore us to stop, breathe and ask the question: Why are so many of us going hungry?

The answers to this desperate plea are complex but not insurmountable. First, the cost of food continues to rise, as well as the budget shortfalls connected to food relief. In Connecticut, the average cost of a meal is $4.27, yet Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits only support 50 percent of the monthly food budget needed for each participant (the average participant receives $216 per month, which equates to $2.40 per meal). Further, 51 percent of Connecticut residents who are food insecure do not qualify for SNAP benefits, earning above the qualifying financial threshold.

Funding the unmet food needs in our state would require an investment of $375 million. Today, the state invests less than $1 million toward food relief through CT-NAP.

Last, due to our society’s long history of gatekeeping basic needs in local communities with concern for welfare dependency, program accessibility is limited with participatory screenings. As a result, fewer people are assisted than are excluded from life-saving programming.

We must dispel stigmas of welfare dependency, as study after study shows that it is the ability to rely consistently on assistance programs that allows households to overcome poverty.

Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond summarizes this concept by saying, “The bigger problem is welfare avoidance. Every year, $140 billion allocated for benefits programs goes wasted because eligible people fail to apply to programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The government makes applying for benefits onerous and confusing.”

This phenomenon trickles into local community structures, with food pantries having limited hours (typically conflicting with work schedules) and program criteria limiting the number of times one household can use the service at all, usually only once or twice per month.

It is my hope that my comments on organizing food drives, volunteering and displaying acts of food kindness do not discourage you from engaging in those activities. Our contributions to those efforts are critical to maintaining the food safety net keeping so many households supported today.

My plea is that we won’t stop there, and that we will work together to address the structural challenges that keep poverty livable for so many of our neighbors and friends.

In light of the increased service needs at the Beth-El Center, we are launching our More Than Food Council, focused on building connection, choice and culture that increases food access and invests in solutions to the root causes of increased food insecurity in greater Milford.

Food insecurity is preventable, and it takes more than food to end it.

Jennifer Paradis is the executive director of the Beth-El Center in Milford.