Hispanic families in the D.C. region are experiencing higher rates of food insecurity as a result of the pandemic.

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Eddie Walker/Flickr

A second-annual report from Capital Area Food Bank found that significantly more Hispanic families in the D.C. region are facing food insecurity after the pandemic — a “dramatic shift” that reflects the ways government-support systems failed those most vulnerable amid the economic fallout of the pandemic.

Out of the 2,000 individuals served by CAFB and surveyed in the report, more than 50% of newly food insecure respondents identified as Hispanic, while only 16% of Hispanic respondents reported experiencing food insecurity before the pandemic. (As defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is “a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.”) Hispanic respondents also reported higher rates of full-time job loss and reduced work hours during the pandemic, demonstrating the pandemic’s widening of pre-existing economic disparities in the region.

“The new trends that we’re seeing in who’s experiencing food insecurity threaten to deepen some [of] our region’s worst inequities,” said Radha Muthiah, CAFB CEO, in a statement.

This year’s report follows CAFB’s projection in July 2020 that food insecurity in the region would jump by 48 to 60% over the next year, and that hunger would disproportionately impact the region’s Black residents. According to this year’s survey, 59% of the respondents who attended free food distribution before the pandemic were Black, while 16% were Hispanic. Asian residents made up 5% of those respondents, and white residents 9%. But since the pandemic began in March 2020, of those who reported being newly food insecure — meaning they visited a food distribution service for the first time — 29% were Black residents, while 51% were Hispanic. Newly insecure respondents were also 60% more likely to have children, according to the survey.

Overall, the number of meals distributed by CAFB more than doubled — from 30 million to 75 million — in the past year. Other providers in the region, like Martha’s Table, saw similarly skyrocketing demand. According to Whitney Faison, a spokesperson for the organization, Martha’s Table distributed 2,000 bags of groceries a week at the beginning of the pandemic. By the summer of 2020, that jumped to 2,000 bags a day — and demand hasn’t let up. The organization is still serving more than 6,500 residents a week, according to Faison.

The CAFB report also found that 72% of Hispanic residents surveyed reported experiencing low and very low food security, compared to 53% of Black residents surveyed, 60% of Asian residents surveyed, and 56% of white residents. Of the 72% of Hispanic residents experiencing food insecurity, 39% reported that they are also worried about eviction right now.

According to Abel Nuñez, the executive director of Carecen DC, a local organization that provides legal and rental assistance to immigrant communities, food insecurity is the result of long-standing economic and racial inequities, and the failure of multiple support systems to reach residents during the pandemic.

“Food insecurity is interrelated with so many other things — health access, dignified housing, access to employment,” Nuñez says. “[Food insecurity] a lot of the time happens because a lot of other systems fail.”

D.C. and the federal government did take steps to alleviate the financial burdens of the pandemic on excluded workers, undocumented residents, and families experiencing food insecurity. The city gave undocumented residents direct cash payments (although the money barely covered essentials), and the federal government modified the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) to make it easier for both new and existing participants to receive benefits. But with demand for these services so high, Nuñez says that the most vulnerable — or those who already faced barriers to reaching government assistance — slipped through the cracks.

Many Hispanic families, he says, ran into problems accessing help when websites were only set-up for English speakers. Language access proved to be a barrier throughout the pandemic; it took D.C. over a week to add more languages to its vaccine sign-up portal.

“All [service providers] I think experienced a sharp increase in calls, so if your volume increases, you are going to serve the ones you have the capacity to serve the fastest,” Nuñez says. “And your procedures for those who need additional help — whether they were limited by access, limited mobility, whatever the limitation was — those were the ones that sometimes fell to the wayside.”

According to the CAFB report, residents who were newly food insecure were two times less likely to speak English as their primarily language — and they were also three times less likely to be connected with government assistance programs. Those who were most severely food insecure were also the residents with the lowest levels of awareness of either government and community resources.

When asked why they were not receiving some form of financial or government-supported food assistance payments, many respondents said they believed they were either ineligible for such programs, or did not understand the process for applying.

Government assistance utilized by respondents

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In addition to the need to pay rent, 39% of respondents cited the ability to earn a living wage as a major barrier to food access. Nuñez says that the region’s Hispanic population was hit especially hard by job loss during the pandemic, as many worked in the food and hospitality sectors, and those who were able to maintain a job in an essential industry then faced a disproportionate risk of contracting COVID-19 — potentially resulting in piled-up medical expenses.

“We saw, particularly in the immigrant community, which is largely El Salvadoran in the DMV, that they got hit at both ends of the economy,” Nuñez says. “They were the first to get laid off because they’re heavily in the hospitality/restaurant industries, so they’re the ones that lost their jobs first. But then at the other side of the economic ladder, you saw people that were mandated as essential workers — construction, cleaning, lower-level health care — so a lot of these people began to get sick.”

While Black Washingtonians now make up the overwhelming majority of D.C.’s coronavirus infections and deaths from the virus, Latino residents reported the highest incidence of infection per capita in the early months of the pandemic.

As local leaders plan to end states-of-emergency at the end of June — and all of the rental and employment protections tethered to them in the coming months — Nuñez and the CAFB report stress the importance of continued governmental assistance, and policy changes aimed at rectifying economic inequities.

“For many households, recent program reforms offer support that just barely meet their pre-pandemic needs,” reads the report. “As these new and expanded benefits begin to wind down, more permanent program reforms are necessary to create an adequate and equitable social safety net.”

According to Nuñez, the increase in family food insecurity means a deeper generational wealth gaps for decades to come, in addition to the mental and physical health impacts of experiencing poverty in youth. He says the region’s leaders need to continue offering rental assistance after the eviction moratoriums lift, and expand support networks for undocumented residents or those who are excluded from traditional unemployment benefits.

“We have this incredibly high potential of creating pockets of poverty,” Nuñez says. “As we’re coming to an end [of the pandemic] it’s not the time to be like ‘okay we’re done, we’re back to normal.’ Now, we need to double down in a lot of the support that we’re providing…we need to create the mechanisms to make people whole again, or least to get them back where they were.”

This story is from DCist.com, the local news website of WAMU.

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