Trying Not to Fall Off the Hunger Cliff

Bar Harbor Food Pantry & Criterion Theatre host Christmas in July to try to make up for rising food need and costs

Jul 12, 2023

BAR HARBOR—For Colleen, a Bar Harbor Food Pantry client, she didn’t know a lot about the pantry for a long time. She’d contribute to a food drive at her church or at her kids’ school. That was it.

“I didn’t even know where the pantry was,” she said on the pantry’s website.

That changed during COVID-19. Her brother lived on a small island off MDI. He couldn’t get to the mainland. His job, which relied on tourism, didn’t give him enough money to make it through the year.

“Suddenly, between my mom and me, we were buying all of his groceries,” she says. “Because, well, you can’t let your brother not eat.”

They did this for months, but months of buying food for her brother’s family took its toll.

“We needed some help. We needed another way. That’s when I found the pantry,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done without the support and connection I’ve found at the pantry. We hope that things will pick up soon. But for now, having support from the pantry, it just peels one layer of worry for my family.”

Colleen and her brother’s family are just a few people who have had to find that support. Now, the pantry, trying to keep up with rising need and increasing food costs, hopes for help providing food.

And that means that people in Bar Harbor might want to help, too.

Last year was the Bar Harbor Food Pantry’s busiest with 3,605 visits. This year looks to be even busier with 2,677 visits just through June. According to a Mount Desert Islander article by Piper Curtin, in May 2022, 350 families used the pantry in Bar Harbor. This year for the same month? 710.

“This is an 80% increase in visits through the same date last year,” Tom Reeve, the executive director of the pantry and Serendipity, said of the yearly numbers

According to a March 2023 article in the New York Times, “Grocery prices increased 10 percent over the past year, according to data released this week. It amounts to a one-two punch: The country’s neediest have less aid to pay for food as it’s getting more expensive.”

Experts call what’s happening a hunger cliff, the Times says. German Lopez writes,

“To buy food, other families may have to use money that would otherwise have gone to rent or other bills — and fall behind on those payments.
“The stress on family food budgets represents a tangible example of how a recent rise in the nation’s poverty rate is affecting people’s lives. The poverty rate fell sharply in 2021 — to 7.8 percent by one measure, from 11.8 percent in 2019 — thanks mostly to economic relief laws that Congress passed in response to Covid. But Congress has let many provisions expire, and the poverty rate rose in 2022 as a result.
“‘It is a very large and abrupt change,’ said Ellen Vollinger of Food Research and Action Center, an advocacy group. ‘The hardship will fall on these families.’”

Those families are families in Bar Harbor, MDI, and all of Hancock County where both year-round and seasonal residents need help not falling off the hunger cliff.

“We are seeing more seasonal workers, especially when they first come into town and have no money and food. This is the common time that we see the majority of them, but there are just more of them this year. I am not sure, but it seems like there were more visas available to the local business this year,” Reeve said, “We are also seeing more year-round residents, coming in more often, as well.”

How the pantry purchased food has changed, which has compounded the need to raise money to support the increased use.

“During the pandemic, Good Shepherd Food Bank was supplementing our purchases through them as a way to help budgets. As of July 1, they have discontinued this program due to costs. Our purchases from them now cost about 25% more,” Reeve said. “Support from the community has been strong this year, but we are facing such a dramatic increase that we will be over budget on our food purchases.”

“Our community partners (Healthy Acadia, Hannaford, Beech Hill Farm, Triple Chick Farm, Bar Harbor Farm, Land & Garden Preserve) have all been generous with gleaned and donated products to help supplement our food purchases. We couldn't do it without them,” Reeve said.

That help is needed by a lot more people than many realize.

According to the USDA, about 10.5% of households in the United States were food insecure in 2020. That percentage translates to 13.8 million Americans. Feeding America estimates that 1 in 8 Americans were food insecure in 2021. An article on Stacker estimates that the food insecurity rate in Hancock County is 8.3% higher than the rest of the country, with the insecurity rate for kids being 22.6% higher than the national average. That translates to 1,690 children and 6,420 people total.

The USDA defines food insecurity as

“At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.”

According to the Maine Department of Education, 1 in 4 Maine kids are “at risk for hunger” and 37% of those children aren’t poor enough for public assistance.

The University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension states that 14.4% of Maine households are food insecure; 16% of Maine seniors, and 1 in 5 children, so the statistics vary a bit. It also states that Maine is 9th in the nation for food insecurity.

That hunger cliff moves closer for many after The Emergency Food Assistance Program increased its income guidelines. The Maine Monitor reports some families have had their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits decrease from $900 a month during COVID times to $120. Social Security beneficiaries received an 8.7% cost of living increase earlier this year, which made some ineligible for SNAP benefits.

Congress funded the benefits during the COVID pandemic back in 2020. That funding stopped in March. That translates to a decrease in $19.2 million a month in Maine.

Joyce Kryszak writes in the Maine Monitor piece,

“Recognizing the link between food insecurity, and adverse health and economic outcomes, Healthy Acadia, a nonprofit that works on an array of community health initiatives in Washington and Hancock counties, launched the Downeast Gleaning Initiative in 2013. Working with community volunteers and students, the program harvests and collects thousands of pounds of excess food from farms, gardens and stores, and redistributes it to more than 30 food security programs throughout Hancock and Washington counties.”

THE BENEFIT EVENT

On July 19, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Bar Harbor Food Pantry, in partnership with the Criterion Theatre and Side Street Cafe, will host Christmas in July, a campaign to fill every seat of the historic theater with donations.

They don’t want to fill the seat with theater patrons.

They want to fill the seats with bags of food (or money) for the Bar Harbor Food Pantry.

“We hope to sell all 760 seats, raising $20,000 to help fill our budget gap,” Reeve said.

Every $25 raised will fill one seat and cover the weekly cost for a two-person household to visit the pantry.

According to a press release,

“This past May and June, the pantry served a record number of customers. As the pantry faces growing demand for services, donations are increasingly important.
“We are hoping our community will help us fill the gap by buying a seat and filling it with food or funds.”

Local businesses have made sponsorships to cover the costs associated with the event. With this support, every donation collected leading up to and on the date of the event will go directly to serving community members facing food insecurity.

Financial donations can be made at BarHarborFoodPantry.com/xmas at any time leading up to the event. Food can be donated at the pantry, Hannaford’s on Cottage Street, and the YWCA drop box in the lobby.

Food and funds will also be collected from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. on July 19th at the Criterion Theatre in Bar Harbor. Questions and information about sponsorship opportunities can be sent to Tom Reeve at Bhpantry@BHFP.org. To donate, go to barharborfoodpantry.org/xmas.

The food pantry is located behind the YWCA. It’s open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursdays from noon to 6 p.m. and Fridays from 9 a.m. to noon.

“We hope to raise $20,000 from the event, which should cover the potential extra food costs we will most likely incur. Food donations are always welcome, but our dollar goes further by buying wholesale,” Reeves said.