By SDCN Staff
San Diego, CA–The San Diego Hunger Coalition has been chosen as one of the initial organizations supported by Save the Children’s Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab, which seeks to bolster community groups working to address child food insecurity in the rural and hardest-to-reach regions of the country.
As part of the support process, the coalition has been awarded a $100,000 grant to facilitate its Hunger Free Kids Mountain Empire program in rural San Diego County. Hunger Free Kids is an initiative that aims to end nutrition insecurity among children through school breakfast and lunch programs, after-school suppers, summer meals, CalFresh support, and more.
Through the Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab, Save the Children will provide funding to organizations to design, test, pilot, and incubate innovative ideas for addressing hunger in rural communities. The lab will also provide recommendations, guidance, and information from experts in child food insecurity and rural issues.
The San Diego Hunger Coalition joins four other organizations from across the United States in the Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab’s initial cohort.
As of June 2022, the San Diego Hunger Coalition estimates that nearly one in three children experiences nutrition insecurity in San Diego County. Food access and nutrition security are multifaceted issues, impacted by cultural, social, political, economic, environmental, and biological factors.
Children in rural areas are especially vulnerable to facing nutrition insecurity because of the lack of public transit options, the limited number of grocery stores, and the difficulty in accessing social services such as food pantries and meal programs.
Supported by local advocates, funders, and elected officials such as the office of County Supervisor Joel Anderson, the Hunger Coalition leads coordinated efforts to end hunger in rural San Diego and throughout San Diego County through research, education, and advocacy. Through its own programs and its policy-level advocacy, the coalition mobilizes to create a hunger relief system that works for all county residents in their time of need.
“We are thrilled and honored to be selected as one of five organizations on a national scale working to address rural food insecurity in the United States,” said Anahid Brakke, President & CEO at the San Diego Hunger Coalition. “We know that ending hunger in San Diego is an achievable goal if we listen to community needs, rely on data and invest in changes at the program and policy level.”
Hunger in San Diego, March 2022 data release:
● Similar to the recovery post-Great Recession, economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has been uneven, with the people who suffered the most during the crisis often being the last to benefit from any economic gains made after the crisis. Long-standing economic disparities by race/ethnicity and gender were exacerbated by the pandemic and continue to persist.
● Low-wage jobs remain the primary reason for nutrition insecurity. The minimum wage increase to $15 an hour still does not equate to a livable wage in San Diego County.
● Rising prices and household debt accrued during the pandemic are also hurting individuals and families that were already struggling financially. 30% of Americans report that they had to take on credit card debt during a public health emergency to stay afloat, and inflation has risen to the highest point in the last 40 years.
● Nutrition insecurity in San Diego County is impacting an estimated 28% of 905,000 people (more than 1 in 4), 35% of children and youth of 251,000 kids (more than 1 in 3), 26% of older adults of 119,000 seniors (more than 1 in 4), and 39% of people with disabilities of 126,000 people (nearly 2 in 5)
● Nutrition insecurity continues to disproportionately impact people of color in San Diego County, perpetuating racial inequities. Nutrition insecurity in San Diego County is impacting an estimated 39% of Hispanic/Latino people, 37% of Black people, 29% of Native American people, 26% of people who report race/ethnicity as “Other,” 20% of Asian people, and 18% of White people.
● The hunger relief sector in San Diego County provided over 33.5 million meals across all programs, meeting 74% of the estimated need for food assistance. Another 11.9 million meals would have been needed in the month of March for San Diego County’s population to be nutrition secure.
● CalFresh emergency allotments comprised 23% of all food assistance, providing nearly twice as much food as was supplied by food banks and pantries in the same month. This federal pandemic aid is slated to expire in early 2023, leaving the rest of San Diego County’s food assistance programs to increase output or face intensifying hunger in the County.
San Diego County and the state of California continue to face nutrition insecurity rates above pre-pandemic numbers. While rates in San Diego County have declined as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, the overall nutrition insecurity rate remains higher than the decade-low achieved in 2019 of 25% of the population.
San Diego Hunger Coalition and the Hunger Free San Diego Advisory Board identify the population in San Diego County with household income below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) as nutrition insecure.
Consumer spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that households below 200% FPL do not have sufficient income to purchase three healthy meals per day as defined by the USDA’s Moderate Food Plan Cost.
Similar to the years after the Great Recession, economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has been uneven, with the people who suffered the most during the crisis often being the last to benefit from economic gains made after the crisis. The economic impacts of the pandemic disproportionately impacted women, non-white workers, workers in low-wage industries, and those with less education. Lower-income families with children 12 or younger were also among those hardest hit. Disparities in unemployment rates by race/ethnicity continue to persist. According to the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities, as of August 2022, “Black unemployment was 6.4 percent and Latino unemployment was 4.5 percent, while white unemployment was 3.2 percent.”
In addition to overall employment in low-wage industries remaining below pre-pandemic levels, wage growth has not kept up with inflation. In San Diego County, the purchasing power of workers at the bottom of the pay scale remains too low to cover their household’s basic needs.
While the minimum wage in California will increase statewide in 2023 to $15.50 hourly ($32,240 annually, if full-time), a living wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that a single adult working full-time in California would need to earn at least $21.82 hourly ($45,382 annually) to fully support themselves.4 In San Diego County, an estimated 30% of full-time workers in San Diego County earn less than $35,000 per year, well below a living wage for our region, and this has not changed in the past decade. The impact of low wages is demonstrated by the fact that one in three people in San Diego County are currently enrolled in one or more public benefits programs, with income eligibility capped at 200% of the Federal Poverty Level.
According to the Congressional Research Service, as of May 2022, inflation has risen “to a level last seen in the early 1980s.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s monthly Cost of Food reports, the average cost of a meal in the United States has increased by 18.4% from November 2019 to May 2022. With many families already limited by low wages, this increase in food prices further reduces the purchasing power of their income as well as any potential EBT non-cash food benefits (e.g., CalFresh/SNAP, WIC, and Pandemic EBT).
The price of a home in San Diego rose 28.5% from April 2021 to April 2022.9 Similarly, since the start of the pandemic, monthly rents in San Diego have increased by 24.4%.
In addition, the price of gasoline increased by 43.3% in San Diego from May 2021 to May 2022. During this time, electricity prices rose by 18.3%, and natural gas prices also increased by 18.1%.
As low-wage workers lost their jobs during the early stages of the pandemic, many were forced to go into debt to continue to meet their basic needs. Household debt has increased by $1.7 trillion in the US since the end of 201912 with 30% of Americans reporting that they took on credit card debt during the pandemic. Of those who took on credit card debt, 48% of them cite inflation as the main reason, and 34% of them cite income loss as the main driver. Of note, parents with children under the age of 18 were the most likely group to take on new credit card debt.
In 2020, the HFSD Advisory Board adopted a new, more timely, and reliable measure of the need for food assistance in our region. Instead of using food insecurity survey data, which notoriously underrepresents the population in need, the methodology now analyzes economic conditions to assess the needs of the people of San Diego County. An economic definition of nutrition security provides a wider view of the interconnected trade-offs between major household expenses, including housing, healthcare, and healthy food, without the social stigma and bias of self-reporting. While food insecurity surveys are an invaluable tool for understanding the lived experiences of people facing food and nutrition insecurity, using economic indicators such as income level center nutrition insecurity as an economic issue tied to wages and purchasing power.
