At DeSoto County resource center, residents can count on more than food

By mid-morning on a recent weekday, the office lobby is already full.

Among the people waiting quietly in straight-back chairs at the All Faiths Food Bank DeSoto Food and Resource Center are working parents; single moms; and a nervous-looking nurse. They are young, old, white, Black and Hispanic.

They all have one thing in common: they are barely staying afloat.

But unlike tens of thousands of struggling residents from Sarasota and Manatee counties, families in the rural community of DeSoto County have few places to turn – despite living in one of the poorest regions in the state.

That’s where All Faiths has stepped into the void, focused on food insecurity while also tackling a range of challenges for rural residents with an innovative, holistic approach to financial stability.

“It goes without saying, you can’t separate the issues of homelessness and housing from hunger, and you can’t talk about those without talking about poverty, jobs and a living wage,” said Sandra Frank, chief executive officer of All Faiths Food Bank.

Present in DeSoto for more than 15 years with its mobile food trucks, the Sarasota-based nonprofit opened the Arcadia resource center in 2019 as part of a pilot project. The center was to be a place residents could get help not only with emergency food staples but with housing, transportation and child care, too.

“We can bring them in with the incentive of food service, then we can help them in other ways,” said Maria Jose Horen, chief program officer at All Faiths.

But as the pandemic unfolded – followed quickly by the housing crisis and Hurricane Ian – demand exploded.

“We couldn’t keep up with the need,” Horen said.

A one-stop shop

The numbers bear out residents’ pain.

According to a report published this spring by United Way Suncoast and its partner United for ALICE, 65% of all households in DeSoto County – the highest level in Florida – are living below what’s known as the ALICE threshold. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Restrained, Employed.

That includes working families and individuals not earning enough to survive as well as those living in poverty.

38% of Sarasota County and 41% of Manatee County households fall below the ALICE threshold.

But DeSoto residents – who likewise are facing skyrocketing rents and grocery bills – have far fewer work options outside low-wage agricultural jobs. Likewise, there aren't nearly as many social service agencies nearby to lend a hand.

That’s why, soon after opening, the All Faiths resource center morphed into an essential one-stop shop for residents – acting as a base for nonprofit partners to offer a variety of services.

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Aside from food distribution, residents could go there for help with pandemic relief through a United Way Suncoast “navigator”; applications to government programs like SNAP, Medicaid and Social Security; free tax preparation through UWS’s VITA program; applications to Season of Sharing, run by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County; as well as other needs.

As the staff grew to eight people, including a full-time case manager, All Faiths partnered with the Health Department and hospital to identify struggling families and schedules specialist visits at early learning centers to assess parents’ needs.

“We are coming to these families instead of waiting for them to come to us,” Horen said.

What’s more, it steadily developed trust among growers and field workers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants – bringing food to the camps for those without transport to the site.

Its impact is growing.

When the center opened in 2019, it served more than 2,100 households who went in for their first time - a number that doubled the next year after the onset of the pandemic.

The numbers surged again last year amid the housing crisis and fallout from Hurricane Ian. This year the center is on track to serve about 5,000 new households, while overall visits are likely to hit 14,000.

In rural communities, having a physical location where residents can seek a range of services in person is often a “game changer,” said Aaron Neal, senior manager of data analysis for United Way Suncoast.

“A lot of places in rural communities have less access to broadband Internet,” he said, “which makes brick-and-mortar sites that much more effective.”

High rents, low wages and a dearth of opportunities

Andrea Guzman-Solano can relate. Before the resource center opened, the 38-year-old Arcadia resident and Tampa native fought “tooth and nail” on her own to obtain disability benefits following seven surgeries related to a car accident 20 years ago.

The center being there to help with government benefits is a “godsend” for residents, she said.

At the moment, though, the biggest worries for her and her husband – an agricultural worker in field maintenance – are the overlapping crises regarding food and housing.

“There is nowhere here to rent,” she said.

Hurricane Ian destroyed their previous home. They commuted two hours one way to a hotel in Tampa using FEMA rental assistance, then lived in their vehicle for over a month.

More recently they have been renting a small 300-square-foot trailer, while also paying several hundred a month to store their things.

Guzman-Solano keeps up a mad search for other options. What she finds is crushing: long waits for one- and two-bedroom apartments asking between $1,500 and $1,700 a month – plus thousands more upfront in deposits and move-in costs.

“It’s honestly made our lives a living hell,” she said of the housing crisis.  “It’s such a battle to even survive.”

For now, SNAP covers groceries for half the month, while food assistance from All Faiths gets them through the rest.

“They’ve helped us in so many ways,” she said of the center.

Jacqueline Valencia, 23, agrees.

“Food costs right now – it’s really crazy, it’s just staggering how high it is right now,” she said, holding her 1-year-old son Lionel on her lap in the center’s lobby as she waited to check in.

While the center helps with her grocery expenses, leaving more room in her budget for rent, her situation highlights other challenges in the rural county: childcare, education, transportation and jobs.

Valencia said she hopes to return to her nursing studies now that the baby is getting older, while his father works in real estate and at Walmart. In addition to a long commute into Charlotte County for her classes, she worries about childcare options and costs, as well as her future employment prospects here.

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Born and raised in Arcadia, with all her family close by, she wants to remain in the county.

“I just wish the pay here was a little higher,” she said of the area, given the soaring cost of living.

While All Faiths stands by ready to help with job training and career counseling, its leaders acknowledge they can only do so much. Structural changes related to schooling and employment options - matters currently under discussion by community leaders - are badly needed beyond the current life raft residents find at the center.

“We do need to provide training,” Horen said of residents struggling to get on solid ground. “But they are going to leave DeSoto because there is no opportunity. We need training – and education and jobs.”

This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: All Faiths Food Bank provides more than food in DeSoto County