The long lines are back at New Jersey’s food pantries.

After subsiding early this year in response to a steady return to work after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for food assistance has returned to a level that equals or even exceeds that when the pandemic shut many workplaces and choked off income, advocates say.

Food bank leaders have long-predicted that higher demand would persist long after the pandemic abated, because many people would be trying to dig themselves out of a financial hole created by months or years of little or no work.

But now, New Jersey’s emergency food network is scrambling to keep up with the effects of national inflation at a 40-year high, pushing up retail prices for gasoline, food and other essentials, and increasing the agencies’ own costs for keeping the distribution centers supplied.

Adding to the pressure is the expiration of benefits provided by the federal CARES Act and of extended state jobless benefits, child tax credits and extra SNAP payments, all of which cushioned the economic blow of the pandemic, and briefly helped to lessen the demand for food assistance.

‘Everything started going up’

“I thought once everybody returned to work, everything would subside, but then everything started going up,” said Tanya Veltz, director of Tree House Cares, a food pantry in Newark’s West Ward. “The numbers went down, now it’s back up again.”

Veltz said she’s now providing food for about 10,000 people a month, up from 7,000 eight months ago. She is also serving around 400 meals a day, up from 300 at the height of the pandemic, and has increased the pantry’s days of operation from three to five a week.

On the eve of Labor Day weekend, she was preparing on Friday to give out 23,000 pounds of food to people who had been in line outside her center since 11 a.m. — four and a half hours before the pantry was due to open.

Parents with school-age children face the extra burden of having to pay for COVID-19 tests that are no longer free but are required by some schools, she said. “The money they could use to buy food and other essential items they have to use for Covid testing.”

‘Families were thinking they were starting to stabilize and get back to work. Then we’ve had inflation of food and higher gas prices…’ — Carlos Rodriguez, Community FoodBank of New Jersey

So far, Veltz said she has been able to meet the increased demand, largely thanks to supplies from the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, the state’s largest, which serves 15 counties through a network of pantries and soup kitchens.

The Hillside-based food bank is now distributing 8.4 million pounds of food a month, up from 7.5 million a year ago, to meet an increase in the number of people visiting food pantries that appears to be about 50% higher than during the pandemic, according to its president, Carlos Rodriguez.

“Families were thinking they were starting to stabilize and get back to work,” he said. “Then we’ve had inflation of food and higher gas prices so getting to work became that much more expensive, and then your earnings were drained by the high cost of everything. That made it that much harder to climb out of the economic hole they’ve been living in for the last two and a half years.”

Extra state aid

The Community FoodBank has been able to meet the increased demand largely thanks to an increase in overall state support to counteract  food insecurity — to $85 million in the current fiscal year, Rodriguez said.

The extra money has enabled it to offset lower than expected food donations, and a reduction in food commodities like ground beef and chickens from the federal government that are about 1 million pounds lower than they were a year ago. Those supply limits have forced the bank to buy more food itself.

‘We are distributing food at pandemic levels. Then, it was the greatest food-insecure event since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, we have a landmark now to go by.’ — Fred Wasiak, Food Bank of South Jersey

Rodriguez predicted more hardship as the holiday season approaches, in part because he’s already having trouble sourcing certain foods like chickens and turkeys.

“Even if many of us are going back to work and looking for a new sense of normal, that comes with a lot of struggle for many of our neighbors as they continue to climb out of the economic hardships that they have dealt with,” he said.

The renewed demand for food assistance comes as a national survey found food insecurity persists in all 21 New Jersey counties and in all 12 of its congressional districts. The annual Map the Meal Gap study for 2020, by the advocacy group Feeding America, also looked for the first time at how food insecurity affects Black and Latino residents — and found that they are more than five times as likely to be affected as white residents.

One in 13 residents impacted

The survey was published at the start of Hunger Action Month, a national initiative to increase awareness of food insecurity, which is defined by the federal government as a lack of reliable access to healthy food. The new study found that 650,000 New Jerseyans, or one in 13, experienced food insecurity in 2020.

At the Food Bank of South Jersey, officials are distributing food for more than 90,000 people a month. That’s in line with around 95,000 that it served at the height of the pandemic but well above 59,000 in January this year, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up world energy prices and snarled supply chains for some food commodities. Before the pandemic, the bank served some 55,000 people a month.

“We are distributing food at pandemic levels,” said food bank president Fred Wasiak. “Then, it was the greatest food-insecure event since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, we have a landmark now to go by.”

Part of the challenge, Wasiak said, is that much of the media appears to have lost interest in the food insecurity story, making it harder for food-aid organizations to raise the extra money they need.

‘We are able to meet the increased demand for food but our concern is how long can we sustain this?’ —  Fred Wasiak

He said food aid has slipped down the public and political agenda in the same way as have communities devastated by Tropical Storm Ida a year ago.

“They are still rebuilding but the media has stopped telling the story,” he said. “Everybody thinks everything is fine there. We’re in the same boat with food insecurity.”

For now, the Pennsauken-based food bank, which serves four South Jersey counties, is keeping up with the increased demand thanks to food donations and its own fundraising. But Wasiak is not sure how long that can last.

“We are able to meet the increased demand for food but our concern is how long can we sustain this?” he said.