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The Year of the Pandemic brought out the best in one of the things Mutual Housing California does best – delivering food to people who need it.
In normal times, Mutual Housing’s community development team distributes a few thousand lunches to young people in the summer’s Eat, Read, Play lunch program, thanks to the support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This year, with families cooped up in their apartments and suffering from significant income reductions due to job losses inflicted by Covid-19, the need escalated, and so did Mutual Housing’s effort to respond to it. By the end of the summer, Mutual Housing had delivered an estimated 30,000 meals to its people, including 15,742 lunches.
Other governmental and charitable organizations contributed food and other resources that provided an additional 4,163 hot meals, lunches, or bags and boxes of food to the residents of its 20 communities.
“Food insecurity is a major issue for our residents, and the pandemic made the issue even more urgent for anyone who is living on the margins in terms of their finances right now,” said Mutual Housing Community Development Officer Anne Marie Flynn. “Our team stepped up and worked with our partners and really adapted to what the needs were during this time. I’m really proud of them, and in a lot of our communities, residents also have been involved in helping with these distributions. They’re stepping up to help each other as well.”
As usual, the Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services and the Yolo Food Bank, along with the USDA, worked with Mutual Housing this summer to keep residents from going hungry. The Twin Rivers, Woodland, and Elk Grove school districts have also been part of the program, along with the United Way California Capital Region and Lutheran Social Services of Northern California. The City of Sacramento joined in for the first time this year by contributing 990 hot meals. Two other new participants joined the program, with My Sister’s House providing 1,950 lunches and the Real Life Church contributing 180 boxes of food.
“Most of them came to us because we had existing relationships in the community and because we’re well-known in the community,” Anne Marie said. “Whether they’re government, faith-based organizations or nonprofits, they know who we are. They reach out to us when they have the opportunity, because we have the reputation of being able to do the follow-through and take something and run with it quickly.”
When the Covid crisis slammed the world in the late winter, Mutual Housing’s community development team immediately identified food insecurity as one of its residents’ top concerns. Thanks to the contributions of some of the new partners, Mutual Housing was able to begin the deliveries of food even before thermometers signaled that it was time for the summer food program to commence.
With its residents sheltering in place, Mutual Housing took on the delivery burden.
“It was just tremendous work by our partners and the community development team where we were willing to take the risks, to be out there in the community, to make sure our residents were getting food, and to do all the back-end work that they had to do to identify which families needed what,” Anne Marie said.
Donors delivered the food to Mutual Housing locations, and the community organizers sorted it and boxed it and delivered it to residents, calling ahead of time and handing it to them directly (wearing plastic gloves and masks, of course), or dropping it off on doorsteps, with as little contact as possible.
“The residents certainly have been appreciative,” Anne Marie said. “I also think there’s been a huge relief to know you don’t have to choose between food or paying your rent or putting gas in the car or any other essential bill, to know that you have at least some of the obligation to your family budget taken care of. To be able to rely on that is a pretty big deal.”
Although the summer program ended, Mutual Housing is still out there rounding up food for its residents. The commodity senior food program is still intact. The Sacramento and Yolo food banks are still providing food assistance, and My Sister’s House is still making and delivering sandwiches. Resident Programs Manager George Xiong also is working with Pastor Dean Deguara of Real Life Church to find other food sources for the Mutual Housing community.
“We know the need still exists,” Anne Marie said. “Residents possibly have more of a need now than they did earlier, because of the changes to the stimulus payments and the extra unemployment money that is no longer there. They actually have fewer resources than they did a couple months ago. The problem is not going to go away for them, so we keep looking for other ways that we can help them.”
Want to support Mutual Housing’s work to address hunger? Help Mutual Housing deliver more meals to those in greatest need. Join us for the Building Up 2020 virtual fundraising event and auction, October 2, 6:30PM.
