Capital Area Food Bank, a Hub of Giving, Serves Northern Virginia's Hidden Poor
By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The boxes and cans and bags of food stretch down several long aisles and up 24 feet. Cranberry sauce. Canned spinach and tuna. Snack packs and cases of fresh corn.
The separate refrigerator and freezer, each large enough to fit a Mack truck with room to spare, hold fresh vegetables and fruit, cartons of dairy products, and other perishables.
To move the crates of food in and out of the warehouse, a forklift sits ready.
This is the Northern Virginia branch of the Capital Area Food Bank, the top of the distribution food chain for churches and organizations that help feed the poor in the Washington suburbs.
The warehouse -- 12,000 square feet of hulking cinder block and corrugated metal -- sits in one of the few industrial areas of the county. It receives millions of pounds of food each year and distributes it to more than 200 service organizations and churches across Northern Virginia-- a part of the overwhelming effort to feed suburban hunger.
Census estimates for last year indicate that Fairfax County's affluence continues to grow. The median household income was $94,610, second in the nation only to Loudoun County. Just 3.6 percent of Fairfax's 257,000 families had incomes below the $20,000 poverty line -- well short of the national average, 12.6 percent.
But as the size and output of the warehouse in Lorton illustrates, hardship has its own statistics. There are 21,000 households in the county in which a woman is the primary breadwinner for one or more children. Among those families, the poverty rate is about 21 percent.
A recent study by Wider Opportunities for Women, a Washington-based advocacy group, estimates that a family of four in Fairfax must earn $62,000 to meet basic needs without any assistance. More than 100,000 residents are living near or below that cutoff. Staff members at the food bank said that its yearly distribution in Northern Virginia, 2.5 million pounds, feeds a growing mix of people, reaching 70,000 in the suburbs last year.
"We see people who own houses, who have mortgages, come to the agencies we serve to get food," said Reuben Gist, director of advocacy and outreach for the food bank.
The food bank is part of a broad network of giving throughout Northern Virginia that often goes unnoticed. There are many individual efforts every day: churches that provide the homeless food donated by congregants, soup kitchens and homeless shelters that keep their pantries filled so families can drop by when they get into a pinch.
Food for Others, a nonprofit organization, is the largest distributor of free food directly to Northern Virginia's needy, distributing about 2 million pounds of food through 40 distribution centers across the region. About a third of that comes from the food bank.
Then there's Macedonia Pentecostal in Alexandria, with a congregation of 70. Its congregants provide food to about 15 families, and they get the food they need from the food bank.
Without the operation, "we wouldn't be able to give anything to the people who really need it," said Maria Barrios, who is in charge of organizing food distribution for the church.
In a region characterized by its affluence, the increasing demand on various food banks is a reminder of a basic need. According to D.C. Hunger Solutions, a group that works with the poor, 8.4 percent of Virginians contend with hunger; in the District, 11.4 percent of households are sometimes hungry; in Maryland, it is about 9.4 percent. The food bank estimates that 1 in 5 children in Northern Virginia is at risk of hunger.
The need now may be great, but the support is weakening; these are lean times for many nonprofit groups that work with the area's poor. Supermarkets, which traditionally have donated food to such banks, have begun selling extra food to discount wholesalers, reducing the amount given away. In addition, high gasoline prices are making it more expensive to transport food.
"It's a miracle we're able to provide what we can, since we are located in an area where there is little food production," said Lynn J. Brantley, president of the Capital Area Food Bank, as she walked around the cavernous warehouse filled with stocked shelves and bins full of food. "But there's a need that many don't see in this area. A need that is constantly in need of being addressed."
Much of the bank's food is overstocked items from supermarket chains such as Giant, Safeway and Harris Teeter. About 35 percent of the bank's offerings come from the Agriculture Department, which provides items including black-eyed peas, refried beans, tomato soup and canned apricots. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of food comes from America's Second Harvest, a national group that says it provided more than 2 billion pounds of food to organizations across the country last year.
The food bank's selections look like outsized supermarket aisles: canned green beans, boxes of black tea, granola bars, canned soup, double-chocolate cake mix, Tupperware and Kleenex. There are toiletries -- shampoo and soap -- that volunteers at homeless shelters pick up to distribute.
For decades, the Capital Area Food Bank served the region from the main office, in Northeast Washington. But to help meet the burgeoning need across the Potomac, the bank opened its Northern Virginia warehouse in 1998. Since then, it has served dozens of small organizations and churches large and small.
On a recent morning, a volunteer rummaged through a shelf stocked with peanut butter and other staples. Organizations come in daily to pick up items, but the food bank also delivers. For food that the food bank has to purchase -- about $400,000 worth each year -- it charges organizations.
"Being able to get fresh food for our clients reliably is a blessing," said Meka Jones, transitional housing caseworker for Community Lodgings, a nonprofit organization in Alexandria. "Our families come to us to help them make ends meet."
Staff writer Bill Turque contributed to this report.
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