"BREAD-LINES forming 4MINS from MARALAGO". Food banks/pantries see DEMAND surge

[Centerleftfl]

I'm surprised, not shocked, it is this fast HERE! Remember DESANTIS JUST SHUT DOWN FLA YESTERDAY!! They're coming, everyone knows that. This is faster than I anticipated. I need to remind people FLORIDA was the canary in the coal mine in 2008. We had parts of Florida that were "food insecure" at least 6 months before it hit the rest of the country. It was my first indication in early 2008 that things were in much worse shape than I realized.

As people lost their homes, HOMELESS were shuttled into those old 2 story motels along expressways and state roads. ORANGE COUNTY, Orlando, had to revamp school bus routes to pick up all the kids from those temporary housing properties.



The Recession Bread Lines Are Forming in Mar-a-Lago’s Shadow

In Palm Beach a diner races to feed laid off workers. Food banks and pantries see surge in demand and long-term need.

By Shawn Donnan
and Reade Pickert
April 4, 2020, 7:00 AM EDT



Volunteers deliver food to members of the community in need outside Howley's Restaurant. Photographer: Saul Martinez/BloombergSHARE THIS ARTICLE

(BLOOMBER) Though it’s just a four-minute drive across the lagoon from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club, and ten minutes from the Palm Beach outposts of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Howley’s diner has become an emblem of America’s stark new economic reality.

With more than 10 million people across the nation suddenly unemployed, bread lines are forming in the shadows of privileged enclaves like this one in Florida.

For the past two weeks, the kitchen staff at Howley’s has been cooking up free meals—the other day it was smoked barbecue chicken with rice and beans, and salad—for thousands of laid off workers from Palm Beach’s shuttered restaurants and resorts. The rows of brown-bag lunches and dinners are an early warning that the country’s income gap is about to be wrenched wider as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, and the deep recession it has brought with it.

Even as much of America is fretting about supermarket shelves depleted of their favorite cereal brands and toilet paper or the logistics of curbside pickup from favorite restaurants, a brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy.

America’s Hunger Problem

More than 1 in 8 people in over half of U.S. counties don’t have adequate food
Source: Bloomberg analysis of data from Feeding America 2019.

“We’re seeing about a 650% increase in our request for support,” said Sari Vatske, executive vice president of Feeding South Florida, which before the pandemic was already serving more than 700,000 people a year in four counties including Palm Beach County. “The growth is exponential.”
The surge in demand is not just in Palm Beach. Food banks around the world have recorded increases in requests for assistance as government-ordered lockdowns have started to bite, prompting employers to lay off staff.

Food insecurity was already a chronic problem in many U.S. communities. Across the U.S. 14.3 million households were short of food in 2018, the last year for which government data are available. That equates to just over one in ten American households. For Black and Hispanic households the rate is closer to one in five.

That is likely only to get worse with the number of people losing jobs at historic levels. In the final two weeks of March alone an unprecedented 10 million workers applied for unemployment insurance. And some economists predict about 20 million people will have lost their jobs by July.

Those being thrown out of work are often people who were living paycheck-to-paycheck beforehand and are therefore among the most vulnerable.
The $2 trillion rescue package Congress passed on March 27 includes $1,200 emergency payments for most Americans and extended unemployment benefits. But the speed in which the aid finds its way to the segments of the population that need it the most will have consequences for how long and deep the recession that’s already underway is.

“It’s just really hitting people who are already the most vulnerable workers in our society so that is going to mean the pain will propagate faster,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department chief economist now at the Economic Policy Institute. “They’re more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck than anyone else, and so if their income falls, they’re more likely to actually have to cut back on necessities like rent and food. So that just makes the recession deeper and longer by pulling even more economic activity out.”



Rodney Mayo, center, and volunteers prepare bags of food to give out to residents outside Howley's Restaurant in West Palm Beach, on April 3.
Photographer: Saul Martinez/Bloomberg

Restaurant group owns Howley’s, started handing out free meals in the diner’s parking lot on Saturday, March 21, after having to lay off 650 workers the day before.

“They were asking ‘Where do we go? What do we do?’ All I really had was the unemployment site that was crashing and nobody could file anything on it,” Mayo said. “But I did promise them: No matter what, you and your families will get fed by us. And I said tomorrow we’ll be open at Howley’s.”
What started with his own employees quickly grew into a bigger effort as friends, suppliers, and fellow restaurateurs pitched in, and area charities began sending other people needing meals his way.

Two weeks on, Mayo has opened another of his restaurants to distribute meals and is preparing to open a third. He’s also turning a warehouse into a food pantry that will distribute groceries. He has secured funds from the local government and set up a charity called Hospitality Helping Hands that is taking donations to keep the effort going.

The 15,000 meals he gave away in the first ten days cost an average of $1.30 each, Mayo said. The bonus has been being able to rehire some of his kitchen staff and to let the others who volunteer keep tips handed out by passersbys.

Just a few days into April, Mayo already expects that he will be handing out meals into June. Even if and when the $1,200 payments the federal government has promised land and unemployment benefits kick in there will be a lingering need, he said.

The current crisis, Mayo said, shone a spotlight on the divide between the pastel-clad privileged lives in the city of Palm Beach, an enclave on a barrier island connected to the mainland by a series of bridges, and the wider county around it. “There’s east of the bridge, which is Palm Beach, and then there’s everything west which is everything else,” Mayo said. “We have some very poor communities.”

Even before the current crisis, three in five children in Palm Beach County’s public schools were eligible for federally-funded free or subsidized lunches, a measure of poverty. “When I tell people there’s hunger in Palm Beach County people think I’m kidding,” said Karen Erren, executive director of the Palm Beach County Food Bank. “But in south Florida our poverty level is always significant.”

The threat of Covid-19 infections has caused food pantries in the area to change how they operate, or shut down. About a third of the 125 that the Palm Beach County Food Bank supplies are now closed, Erren said. Also a rush of panic buying has depleted stocks at supermarkets, particularly of shelf-stable foods, meaning donations from grocery chains are shrinking.

Vatske said a sharp reduction in the supply from retailers to Feeding South Florida alongside the surge in demand had almost tripled its running costs. “It costs us about a $125,000 a week to operate under blue skies. Right now we’re looking at about $350,000 with having to purchase food. So we’ll need about $1.4 million a month to keep this going,” she said.


Food banks and pantries are also planning for what they fear will be a longer term effect from the Covid-19 crisis. “What I’m thinking about right now is ‘Call me in a month’s time. Call me in two month’s time.’ Because that’s when reality will have hit,” said Ruth Mageria, executive director of Christians Reaching Out to Society Ministries, in Lake Worth, another town in Palm Beach County.

Local food banks and pantries interviewed for this story said they have not had any contact with the Trump Organization or Mar-a-Lago, which was shut for cleaning last month after a cluster of Covid-19 cases was linked to a member of the entourage of visiting Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro and has not reopened.

Neither the club’s general manager nor spokespeople for the Trump Organization responded to multiple requests for comment...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-lago-s-shadow

[Jack]

They all have nice cars.
Any word about the people that live in cardboard boxes under the bridge?

[Centerleftfl]

They all have nice cars.
Any word about the people that live in cardboard boxes under the bridge?

People will lose their cars. They'll just run out of food quicker before the REPO men can show up.

[AProudLefty]

Does Mickey Mouse give bread?

[Stone]

Absurd. Some of the over the top national inquirer kind of stuff you post is just.......point right at you and laugh in your face worthy.

[volsrock]

People will lose their cars. They'll just run out of food quicker before the REPO men can show up.

How long did u have to wait in line?

[volsrock]

800x-1.jpg

Not 6 feet apart...arrest them!

[Centerleftfl]

Does Mickey Mouse give bread?

They've been closed for the most part for 3 weeks. I doubt MICKEY is giving out anything. BUT they do have a 'stream' of charities and programs administered by some entity within DISNEY. Probably has a whopping DEPT full.

They started FURLOUGHING employees WED. That tells me they were likely paying them until now.

[dukkha]

furlough starts the 19th for DisneyWorld.
Disney is estimated to employ 45,000 people in Florida, more than any other company in Florida.

[volsrock]

furlough starts the 19th for DisneyWorld.
Disney is estimated to employ 45,000 people in Florida, more than any other company in Florida.

I hope it NEVER opens back up!

[Centerleftfl]

I hope it NEVER opens back up!

You'd piss on puppy.

[Centerleftfl]

Absurd. Some of the over the top national inquirer kind of stuff you post is just.......point right at you and laugh in your face worthy.

Let me assure, if you are talking about me, I do NOT read the National Enquirer. That's TRUMP'S baby. And its publisher was HIS BFF. Have you already forgotten? David PECKER is his name.

[Bill]

I hope it NEVER opens back up!

All that fun & joy must just irk you to no end.....

[Centerleftfl]

How long did u have to wait in line?

Actually, I'm trying to ORGANIZE a food drop TO a charity in the county. A little tricky in these times. Not the least concern we have some older members of our DEMOCRATIC organizations and most are hunkered down. It will require 'meetups' in some form.

But thanks for your concern about my condition.

[Bill]

Thank you Centerleftfl

There are several ppl here that still think it's a hoax, maybe they'll be glad to help out, they fear nothing..