Alameda County Community Food Bank

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Increase in Poverty Reported by U.S. Census Bureau's Data Foreshadowed by Increase in Demand for Alameda County Community Food Bank’s Services

Contact: Kari Martell
(510) 287-2344

Increase in Poverty Reported by U.S. Census Bureau's Data Foreshadowed by Increase in Demand for Alameda County Community Food Bank’s Services

Oakland, Calif. (8/26/04) –Today, the US Census Bureau released its data on state and local poverty levels for 2002-2003, and their information shows that poverty has increased, a fact that the Alameda County Community Food Bank had suspected based on the increase in demand for its services.

Calls to the Food Bank's Emergency Food Hotline have increased by 50% this fiscal year (2003-2004). The hotline made 12,421 emergency food referrals this year compared to 8,256 last year. The hotline referrals for Spanish speaking clients also went up significantly, by almost 40% over last year.

In Alameda County, Food Stamp cases are up from a low of 20,738 in June 2002 to 24,420 in March 04. Other poverty alleviation programs such as CalWORKs and the General assistance program show similar increases.

"The Census report is no surprise to us, as we've seen this trend for the past few years," states Suzan Bateson. "Caseload trends for poverty relief programs mirror the Census data and are good indicators of how the economy is doing. Using these same numbers, we predict that next year's Census report onpoverty will show increases as well," she adds.