The problem of hunger persists in all corners

Thanksgiving is upon us again and Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, estimates that one in seven people in our nation utilizes its network of food banks.

This number applies even in one of the richest places in the world — Silicon Valley — where the tech explosion has fueled skyrocketing mortgage and rental costs that have cast many longtime residents into near or actual homelessness.

“My family has been here since 1860 or so; they were pioneers who came in a covered wagon to farm the rich land and now, all these years later, there’s concrete and tar, parking lots for high-tech companies and freeways covering what used to be called the Valley of the Heart’s Delight,” said Dee Dee Kiesow, a development officer with Cityteam Ministries, a San Jose-based nonprofit that works to help people struggling with poverty, homelessness, and addiction. “Now, with the high cost of housing, just renting a room in a house takes nearly all your money and people are making hard choices about whether to eat or pay the rent. After living in this area 150 years, even my family is facing having to move out.”

Kiesow told me that, counter to the stereotypes about who goes hungry in America, in the heart of Silicon Valley, homelessness and hunger are not exclusively linked to unemployment:

“Many of the people who use our food pantry have jobs. We have lots of two-parent working families but they have to choose when and what to eat. The biggest crisis facing all of us is being able to afford to have a roof over our heads. The big tech boom brought a glut of people with very high salaries — to the point where there is little or no housing for our low-income men, women and families. Food and everything else have become so expensive, and if you have a minimum-wage job and make, say, $22,000 a year, I don’t even know that you could find one room to rent for that kind of money here.”

(Apartmentguide.com says that a studio apartment in San Jose averages $2,537 per month.)

For the second year in a row, Cityteam is partnering with the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team to host a Thanksgiving food giveaway at Avaya Stadium, a venue big enough for staging truckloads of food that will eventually become food boxes filled with fresh produce, canned goods and a choice of turkey or chicken. It’s also big enough to host the huge crowds that are expected to show before Thanksgiving for the complimentary food boxes.

Cityteam was serving between 1,300 and 1,400 people at its own facility but logistical difficulties led it to partner with the Earthquakes. In 2015, the two organizations doubled the number of families served to 3,000 and are expecting 5,000 this year.

“These are people who work and have to make ends meet over a long holiday weekend,” said Kiesow. “Their kids usually get breakfast and lunch at school, but with the break, when the parents leave with that food box, they know that their children’s meals will be covered and it gives them peace of mind.”

Kiesow said that it’s important to illustrate what’s going on in Silicon Valley because it isn’t a clearly delineated tale of haves and have-nots.

“My husband is an inventor and his wave-energy robot technology is wonderful and has helped us live a good life here ... and my son is a gamer and starting in coding, so it’s not that we are anti-technology,” said Kiesow, who, in addition to her work with Cityteam, moonlights as an auctioneer at charity events to help pay the bills and the mortgage. “But at what cost do we enjoy such technology? And what have been the unanticipated consequences of moving forward with a more technology-enabled world?”

Not enough of us consider such questions, but the intractability of the march of technological progress needn’t impede us from helping those who haven’t been enriched by it.

Esther Cepeda’s email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

Steve Sebelius is on vacation.