TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — At a drive-by food distribution at Interfaith Community Services’ food bank, Amanda Bravo and her family waited patiently in line. Lately paying for food has been rough for Bravo and her family, especially because she said her mom recently had surgery and can’t work.
“It’s definitely been a struggle this year,” Bravo said. “It’s just scary to me to know that we have to live paycheck to paycheck now and it used to not be like that.”
Her struggles have her on the verge of homelessness, something that Bravo said she never would have thought about before.
“It’s just not enough the amount of food stamps and things like that that we get for inflation,” she commented.
Food prices, the latest data from the Bureau of Labors Statistics shows, rose a little over one percent from last August to this August.
“It taxes us. There’s been a little less food for us to give out,” Tom McKinney, Interfaith Community Services’ CEO said.
In 2022, the BLS said food prices went up by almost eight percent from August 2021 to August 2022. While the rise in grocery prices hasn’t been nearly as dramatic, McKinney said it’s still been tough paying for food.
“Every year that it goes up, it never comes back down. It’s always gone up,” he said.
However, ICS is also dealing with more demand from the community. This year they said they’re serving over 17 thousand more individuals so far from January to September when comparing the same months to last year.
“It’s a lot of, for us, working with the clients that are coming through, having to get more volunteers because we have excess people coming in everyday,” McKinney said.
Throughout the month of October they’re doing a food drive where people can donate at 50 sites throughout the area. McKinney is hoping it not only offsets costs for them, but also offsets costs for the people that really need the food like Bravo.
“Thanks to this place like Interfaith Community Services, it’s really been a life saver,” Bravo said.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
