From canned staples to full Thanksgiving dinners, L.A. food banks and community centers help households feeling the pinch of higher prices this year.
Higher prices for groceries. Record gas costs. An ongoing pandemic that has meant reduced work hours for some and an inability to work for others. For many people this year, Thanksgiving dinner will be harder to put on the table.
“Everything is sky high,” Wilmington resident Kenneth Gulley, 57, said after he picked up a box of staples — green beans, some fruit, cream of wheat, beef stew — at a local community center this week. “I barely make enough to get by.” Food banks across the state have reported sustained higher demand — in some cases two to three times what it was before the pandemic, said Andrew Cheyne, director of government affairs at the California Assn. of Food Banks.“Not only is there acute need still from the pandemic, but it’s going to last a long time,” he said. “We know from the Great Recession that it took a full decade for food insecurity to come back to pre-2008 levels.”“This turkey is really helping us.
At the Pasadena Senior Center, Dorothy Brown sat in the lobby while a chef and volunteers prepared 250 Thanksgiving meals, including turkey, stuffing and vegetables, for delivery Wednesday to seniors. Cardboard boxes were piled on a table outside the Community Resource Center in Wilmington ahead of its weekly food pantry distribution. This week, there were canned goods, packaged beef stew and some breakfast porridge.