Families face difficult choices

The line forms early outside Living Faith Assembly.

Those who come to this nondenominational church on East Charleston Boulevard brave the morning chill or wait in their vehicles for up to three hours for the truck from Three Square food bank to roll in for its Wednesday delivery.

By 8:30 a.m., with Living Faith's food pantry replenished, Wayne and Beverly Carrington and their fellow parishioners are open for business. The Carringtons direct the food pantry at the church, which serves a working poor community hit extremely hard by the recession and housing foreclosure crisis.

Mention Las Vegas, and it's easy to conjure images of the abundance of all-you-can-eat buffets and cheap steak dinners and the false perception that food is within easy reach of everyone. We are the land of the comped meal, the Plate o' Plenty, and the 99-cent shrimp cocktail, right?

The reality is different and unsettling. While many of the working poor have slipped into what experts now call "extreme poverty," the foundering job market and grind of the recession have also changed life for increasing numbers of middle-class families, many of whom are experiencing food insecurity for the first time. Their home cupboards are bare.

And so they find themselves reluctantly seeking assistance from one of the valley's many food pantries such as the one at Living Faith, where a weekly wait in line can mean up to 50 pounds of meat, dairy, bread, juice and canned goods for a family in need. The church feeds approximately 250 families, about 1,100 people, each week.

In the recession, many Southern Nevada neighborhoods are feeling hunger pangs.

"We're seeing a change in the type of person who comes here," says Wayne Carrington, a retired Metro cop. "It's the first time they've sought public assistance, and many of them are embarrassed."

Some have arrived in Escalades and Navigators, he says. Out of work often for the first time in their lives, they are faced with answering a painful and complex question: Do I pay the mortgage, the electric bill, or do I feed my family?

"Our biggest challenge is helping people, but also helping people keep their dignity," Carrington says. "Many of them don't even know what the process is. But there is no shame in coming in."

He has seen more than one father remain behind in the car, embarrassed to join the line, while the mother comes forward to accept the weekly supply. It's the kind of scene Brian Burton and his colleagues at Three Square have observed many times.

"As we deal with our 600 program partners throughout the community that see the face of hunger every day, first hand, walking into their pantry, their shelter, their soup kitchen, their school, the stories we're getting back are very disturbing," Burton says. "We don't see movement in the right direction."

In fact, Three Square has noted a 15 percent increase in need from a ZIP code in the Summerlin area, far from the valley's poorest neighborhoods.

If the face of hunger in the land of plenty is becoming more commonplace, it is also becoming more diverse. The working poor and generational poor are being joined by the situational poor.

Burton recalls a recent meeting with a father of triplets. He was 30 and had lost his store management job. The head of the middle-class family had reluctantly started using food stamps and was attempting to access the Medicaid system for the first time.

"He had this bewildered, sort of dazed look on his face because he'd never been in the system," Burton says. "What we're hearing about is more and more situational poverty as opposed to generational poverty. ... They're scared and very uncertain about what to do and where to turn for help. You can feel the desperation around them."

Nationally, the recent debate has been about how to interpret the numbers. While the census and a study by the Brookings Institution indicate America's poor population increased by 53 percent in the 2000s, an analysis by The New York Times counters that such alarming figures are based on incomplete data and don't take into account the many private and public social service agencies that assist the poor.

At Three Square, Burton says the proof is in the pallet -- thousands of them. The food bank serves 600 program partners and about 100,000 people a month. The outside experts can keep their numbers. Burton trusts his. In 2008, Three Square delivered 10 million pounds of food. This year, it will surpass 25 million pounds.

Piled high, that's as tall as 73 Stratosphere Towers, he says.

No matter how you stack it, that's a lot of food and an even greater need. Three Square, like the large and small organizations it serves, also distributes information on job training, GED and English as a Second Language courses, and other social services. There's also plenty off guilt-free encouragement.

"We want to give people a little more hope because they're doing something to improve themselves," Burton says.

Even with all that, he estimates, only about one third of the overall need is being met.

At Living Faith, the mission is clear and expanding, and the only question a family must answer is, "Are you in need?"

Increasingly, the answer is, "Yes."

For his part, Carrington is grateful for the opportunity to help and let's me in on a secret.

"The ones serving are the ones blessed," he says.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Email him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295.
He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.