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Food stability at your doorstep 

Not only have many Seattle food banks continued to offer home delivery as the danger of the pandemic has waned, some have expanded their programs and are innovating new ways to serve people who are unable to come in person.  

UWKC, which continues to partner with 12 Seattle food banks to provide delivery services through DoorDash, coordinated more than 56,000 home deliveries in the city in 2023 alone, serving nearly 1,700 households. Many food banks now have a waitlist for home delivery. 

Here’s how it works: Anyone who’s unable to go to the food bank for any reason can contact UWKC or their neighborhood food bank and fill out a form with information about their family size, dietary restrictions, cultural preferences, and any needs for home essentials, like diapers, baby food, and hygiene items.  

Every week or every other week, neighborhood food bank staff and volunteers pack customized boxes with fresh produce, meat, dry goods, and more – depending on what’s available – while trying their best to accommodate each household’s preferences. They then hand the box over to a DoorDash or volunteer driver, who delivers it directly to the family’s front door. 

“We want each box to have a balance, and we want it to last a full week,” says Leon Forde, Market Coordinator at Byrd Barr Place. 

A different way to provide food access 

These kinds of home delivery programs proliferated during the early months of the pandemic, but some got their start years earlier as food banks recognized that traditional models for addressing food insecurity were still out of reach for some people.  

Rainier Valley Food Bank (RVFB) has been delivering groceries to homebound residents for more than a decade, while North Helpline started its program in 2019 serving about 75 people each month. Today, that number has grown to around 920. 

“It’s about looking at other ways to alleviate the fear of not having enough food,” says Nathan Meacham, Food Access Coordinator at North Helpline. “This is one more way to do it.” 

The service has become a lifeline for a wide variety of people in Seattle, including those with disabilities and compromised immune systems, single mothers without daycare, workers with inflexible schedules, and anyone who doesn’t have the time or means to go to a food bank during set hours and wait in line for their turn to pick out groceries. 

“The majority are people who have lost mobility in some way, so they’re more homebound than they were,” Nathan says. “They call because they may have come into the food bank before, but now it’s a burden for them.” 

“Someone called last week just to say thank you. He said this program saved his life – that without it he wouldn’t have been able to eat the last few years.”  

~Chloe Finkenbine, RVFB Home Delivery Program Coordinator 

Home delivery is also seen as an important tool for addressing food equity, helping to reach communities that have historically been underserved by food access programs. Nearly 60% of households served by UWKC’s home delivery program identified as people of color, according to a 2021 University of Washington analysis, and about half had someone in the house with a disability. 

People who use the programs often report that they’re grateful to have reliable access to food – something they can count on weekly or every other week. For some, it’s a source of stability when other things in their life may feel out of control – and it may mean the difference between eating and going hungry. “A lot of our clients, they’re just really grateful,” says Leon at Byrd Barr Place. “If we don’t deliver the food, they might not eat.” 

“Someone called last week just to say thank you,” says Chloe at Rainier Valley Food Bank. “He said this program saved his life – that without it he wouldn’t have been able to eat the last few years. I just hear stuff like that all the time from the volunteer drivers and clients.” 

The programs are meant to be low barrier, so people signing up don’t have to prove their income or any kind of disability. However, they are asked to give a reason why they’re unable come to the food bank during regular hours, and they’re encouraged to make it in if they can. 

“We want to reach as many people as possible, so we still want people who can come in to come in,” says Leon at Byrd Barr Place. 

Online ordering comes to the food bank 

There’s one big reason why most food bank users will still want to come in if they can: If they shop in person, they’re able to fill up their cart or basket with as much of whatever they like. For home delivery, food banks are currently limited in how much they can customize a box for each household and how much they can fit in it. 

Rainier Valley Food Bank (RVFB) is working to change that. In partnership with Jewish Family Service (JFS), the food bank has piloted an online ordering system called Tri-River Market that allows users to pick individual items for their weekly delivery. 

“If someone wants to order 100 onions in a week, they are totally free to order 100 onions from us – as long as we have the inventory,” says Chloe Finkenbine, RVFB Home Delivery Program Coordinator. 

In addition to giving home-delivery recipients more options, Tri-River Market is designed to further food-access equity by overcoming any stigma that might keep some people from visiting a food bank even if they’re having trouble getting enough to eat. Deliveries come in unmarked paper bags, so there’s no indication they came from a food bank. 

Brian Sindel, JFS Food Bank Manager, says the organization partnered with RVFB on the project to better serve close-knit Jewish communities that have not traditionally used food bank services because of the stigma. 

“We know that this community has not accessed JFS services in the past, primarily because the Jewish community is very small and it may not feel like you can go to something like a food bank without seeing someone you know,” Brian says. “The families in this community are quite large, and because food is getting so expensive in Seattle – especially kosher food –it can be a real burden.” 

Need outpaces capacity 

Home delivery wasn’t an option at most food banks four years ago, but it has already become so popular that many organizations have reached capacity and now keep running waitlists. UWKC currently has more than 1,000 households on its home delivery waitlist and warns new applicants to expect “extremely long wait times” depending on their area. North Helpline has a waitlist as well, while RVFB recently shifted resources so it could offer delivery to about 60 people who had been on its waitlist.  

On the other hand, Byrd Barr still has capacity for home delivery and continues to sign up more people. “We can add them on pretty quick,” Leon says. “They don’t have to wait for weeks or months.” 

The biggest thing food banks say they need to increase delivery to more homes is the support of additional volunteers, both to pack boxes and deliver them. Many organizations are actively recruiting volunteers and hope to be able to reach more people soon. 

Whatever happens, it’s clear that home delivery is now a fixture in the response to food insecurity. 

“The program has really shown that there are different ways of doing things — that the emergency food system is more malleable than we realized it was,” says Sara at UWKC.

According to the University of Washington’s Wage Equity for Non-Profit Human Services Workers report, women make up almost 80% of workers in human services, and Black/African-American workers are nearly three times as likely to work in human services than in non-care jobs. The UW team sought to understand why wages are lower in human services than in other sectors, they found there were five main penalties that suppressed these wages: 

Sexism. 

Racism. 

Care work is undervalued. 

Clients have low power.  

Nonprofit sector wage suppression from public subcontracts.

When we have staff who are compensated fairly and engage in this work for the long-term, we can be a more effective force for change and provide the solutions to these crises that are facing our community. 

No matter how rewarding it is to be engaged in this vital work, chronic underpayment is a major disservice to our staff and community. Frequent turnover as a result of low paying jobs hinders our agencies from achieving our missions and hurts our community when relationships are cut short. 

Elected officials and funders recognize that our work is essential for our community to thrive. We know our community needs and depends on our agencies for safe, reliable, and culturally appropriate food access. Yet, the funding we receive does not allow us to compensate our staff at levels that recognize the value of their labor. In many cases our staff are not compensated at levels that recognize the cost of living in Seattle. 

We stand in full solidarity with the Seattle Human Services Commission’s city budget priorities. We applaud City Council’s passage of a resolution this year to take action on wage equity for human services workers and we are encouraged by responsive and swift actions to the care worker crisis in our city. We stand in support of the Mayor and council’s recent actions to add a 2% increase for wage equity efforts on top of the cost of living adjustment for human services contracts required by law. This is a strong start to work that must continue and be carried by us all. We urge funders to lead by example and fund the true cost of operating food banks and support an emergency food system that can meet the complex needs of our community. Paying equitable wages will allow our agencies to focus on their missions, maintain consistent staff to build essential relationships with our clients, and end the perpetuation of undervaluing food access and human service work.

Questions from the coalition and attendees covered a broad range of human services issues, from supporting increased services for survivors of gender-based violence, to ensuring equitable food access, from protecting the tree canopy and addressing heat islands in the city, to addressing the lack of affordable childcare.

The forum included one-on-one time for the candidate pairs from each district to answer specific questions as well as a lightning round where candidates responded yes, no, or waffle to questions ranging from police accountability to if childcare workers should receive subsidies regardless of income. All candidates answered yes to most of the lightning round questions, with a couple of candidates waffling on a question about pursuing more progressive revenue sources for the city.

On one key initiative for the Seattle Human Services Coalition and for the Seattle Food Committee – wage equity and living wages for human services workers – all candidates indicated support for additional city funding to human services providers for this work.

Nearly all candidates for current city and county council races were present for the forum, including current city council members who arrived late after passing legislation around prioritizing drug treatment and addressing public drug use.

The two candidates not attending were Sofia Aragon, running for King County Council District 8 against Teresa Mosqueda, and Pete Hanning in the City Council District 6 race against incumbent Dan Strauss. Another way to hear from the candidates on these issues is their responses the written survey from SHSC earlier this year. For the candidates not attending the forum, Aragon provided responses to the survey and Hanning has not.

While there are no other forums or debates planned to focus on human services overall, voters and community members wanting to hear more from City Council candidates about their views and plans around homelessness can check out the recordings of the 2023 Homelessness Debates hosted by KNKX and We Are In.

We encourage our neighbors to dig deep into candidate plans for human services in our community and make your voices heard as we work toward a more equitable future for Seattle and King County.

For this year’s tour, our committee met at Food Lifeline before embarking across the City in a Metro Access van to Ballard Food Bank’s new location. Ballard Food Bank re-opened two years ago in a space built from the ground-up and what a treat it was for us to see. The shopping area is very spacious and designed just like a grocery store, allowing for a familiar and dignified shopping experience. The building also houses their kindness café that serves up delicious, hot meals – on the day we visited the menu included a frittata with roasted veggies and feta cheese!

Our next stop was at the Rainier Valley Food Bank (RVFB). Here we got to learn about the many, exciting projects underway. Currently, RVFB is operating out of their new home, a space they just moved into just last year. As the busiest food bank in the City, RVFB required a food bank with more square footage to allow their guests a more comfortable shopping experience. And yet, RVFB remains ever more ambitious as they will soon embark on building out a brand-new food bank, much like the one we visited in Ballard, but with their own touches.

Our group then made the short journey to The Rainier Beach Urban Farm and Wetlands (RBUFW), where we explored their growing areas, greenhouses, fruit orchards and had a delicious lunch. We learned about RBUFW’s varied and impactful community programs including their farm stand, CSA, community kitchen dinners, workshops, and free foraging from their fruit orchard.

We then journeyed over to visit Cultivate South Park, an incredibly inspiring resident-led, community development organization that spearheads multiple projects. We learned about their food access initiatives including the Urban Fresh Food Collective and El Mercadito Farmer’s Market. We were also treated to delicious, freshly cut fruit – the perfect refreshment as the weather started to creep up to the 90’s!

For our final stop, we went back to where it all started at Food Lifeline. Here we took a tour of their massive and immaculate Hunger Solutions Center. A facility where food that all our member agencies receive is shipped, packed, and stored. We carefully navigated the endless rows of palletized food as forklifts zipped by. We also took a quick tour of the building that will be home to the future South Seattle Community Food Hub, a space that will help connect local farmers with food access organizations (I’m sure there will be a blog post about this in the future!)

It was a long day, one full of connecting, learning, and eating with one another. Our van tour this year brought to the forefront just how varied our region’s approach to food access and food justice is. Each approach plays a different role and is vital to addressing the food needs of the Seattle area. The process of supporting, learning, growing, and working with another is the embodiment of what the Seattle Food Committee aims to achieve. We are very thankful for Solid Ground as the organizer, to all the organizations who hosted us this year, and the City of Seattle for continuing to fund the SFC Van Tour. We are already looking forward to SFC Van Tour 2024!

Every year the event organizers determine a full slate of issues to prioritize, and this year that included: providing school meals at no cost for all students in Washington, Hunger Free Campuses to ensure that college and community college students meet their basic needs for food and other essential needs, investing more funding in the Fruit & Vegetable Incentives Program to increase the affordability of nutritious food, and increasing support for We Feed Washington and our emergency food system.

The question at the beginning of this blog post will remain rhetorical until we have a system that truly meets the needs of everyone in our state. Though we do know the more food justice advocates we can bring together, the more we can make our voices heard and grow our impact. In that spirit, we hope to see you in Olympia for Hunger Action Day 2024!

To learn more about the issues and stay up to date, please visit Northwest Harvest’s list of Legislative Priorities.

Inflation has hit the country hard, and Seattle has not been spared. This year the Seattle area saw an inflation rate of 9%. More troubling, inflation has not hit equally across consumer goods. Foods that are staples of healthy diets have seen costs rise well beyond the 10% mark. For example, our member agencies are reporting a doubling in cost of both milk and eggs.

What does this look like in real terms? It’s a family of four not being able to afford a carton of eggs at the store with their limited SNAP benefits. It’s that same family going to their local food bank to learn that the food bank couldn’t order eggs for the week either and the hope that next week they can.

It’s a homebound adult attending a nutrition class, and afterward feeling the immense frustration that their SNAP benefits are no longer enough for them to purchase the foods they were advised to buy and that their food bank deliveries have gotten smaller.

Deciding how to prioritize a stretched budget is not an easy task for an individual, family, or organization to make. For every agency in our committee the choice to reduce the amount of food available is a last resort. For this reason, we do everything within our power to prevent our guests’ needs from going unmet, but we must ask ourselves: is this sustainable?

Seattle’s emergency food system, and many other social services, are facing a budget crisis as a result of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal to cap human services contracts at a 4% increase – out of step with the law he helped pass as a councilmember. By not following the law, food banks and human services organizations are being handed a cut and will likely have to reduce services as a result. We need support to ensure we can keep pace with the increased costs of providing critical services to our community, and in the form of investments that build the capacity of our food system to equitably address this increased need in our community. We call on the City to follow the budget recommendations put forth by the Seattle Human Services Coalition and to have our City contracts reflect the true level of inflation.

The funds our agencies receive from the City allow many of us to pay for our small staff. Our staff who, as essential workers, kept food banks open during the height of pandemic lockdowns. The funds also allow our agencies to purchase the nutritious, culturally relevant food that can be the only source of food for some households.

We are all stronger when everyone in our community has access to healthy food. As community members, you can take action by donating and volunteering with your local food bank, as well as by letting your city councilmember know that it is critical to pass a city budget that reflects the true level of inflation. Together, let’s make sure everyone has access to milk, eggs, and healthy produce throughout the year.

And in turn, they also learned from us. Most of the Guardsmen I met had never been to a food bank. They had never heard the words “food insecurity” or “food justice” or seen the long lines that sometimes stretched around corners, or the faces of people who utilize our service.

Several guardsmen told me they regarded this experience as the most extraordinary mission they had ever undertaken. I realized that our Guardsmen wanted to help people. The bonds between us formed quickly. The depth of their commitment became clear to me one day when I realized the food bank was being sustained almost entirely by the National Guard. As the pandemic became more of a reality and the number of our clients continued to rise, we met their needs thanks primarily to Guardsmen. When our community had to quarantine for months, the Guardsmen came to the front lines to make sure people who needed our services received it. It was an extraordinary experience to witness. 

In the summer of 2020, when the BLM movement swept across Seattle, the National Guard’s mission split; some continued to work with us, while others went to the protests. I became concerned. The uniform they signed up to wear had become a target in Seattle. The same folks that were unpacking and sorting thousands of pounds of food for our community was also holding a forceful line against protesters in our city. How were we supposed to reconcile these seeming contradictions? 

I found myself in a unique position to ask those questions to the Guardsmen I had spent the last few months with. In their answers I found something with them that I suspect most of humanity believes. It’s a feeling that we all share that somehow gets lost in our differences. We all want a peaceful, healthy life. We all want access to the things that make us feel human. We all want to be warm and nourished so that we can pursue those fruits of being alive.

Despite our differences, something changed when we decided to work together to serve our community. Thank you to all the Guardsmen who came to the front line with us. The National Guard distributed millions of pounds of food to a nation of people in the throes of the pandemic. The Guardsmen who showed up every day, we salute you and your service.

The viewpoints expressed in this article represent the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Seattle Food Committee.

Due to school closures in response to Covid-19, we had to pivot our operations from delivering to school partners to delivering 4,000 bags to the Seattle School District offices, and their 40 meal sites. We are now back to pre-pandemic school partnerships and independent distribution.  All schools in Seattle are paired with one of the Food for Schools agencies, and several agencies are now serving beyond Seattle Public Schools and into multiple school districts and some private schools.

A big challenge of the pandemic has been the supply chain. For a lot of us, actually getting the food has been the hardest part.  One of our biggest providers stopped stocking our backpack items altogether.  Even the big distributors have been out of stock of a lot of our regular bag items, making it difficult to create healthy nutritious bags.  We have had to be creative in the seeking of new items, finding new distributors, and developing alternative menus, that still meet the needs of the students we support.

But through it all, Food for Schools has come together, supported each other, shared resources and ideas, always with the thought of providing the best bags possible to the most students, to help them fill their bellies one weekend at a time!

To learn more about the Food for Schools, attend a meeting, or donate, please reach out to Nichelle Hilton at nichelle@backpackbrigade.org