Feeding Tampa Bay has seen a 35% increase in Bay area residents who need help with food since before the pandemic. Last year, Feeding Tampa Bay served more than 95 million meals in an area that stretches from Hernando to Manatee County.
“We appreciate that people pour their hearts out during the holiday season and care for those in need. But our neighbors are hungry every single day of the year and are food insecure,” Shannon Hannon Oliviero told MidPoint hosts Janet Scherberger and Rochelle Reback on Nov. 24. “We have a lot of people in our lines searching for food to put in our table.”
Covid 19, supply chain issues and rising food prices have all caused the spike in food insecurity that will likely take
It’s likely to take five years for those impacted by those turn of events to to recover, Feeding Tampa Bay CEO Tom Mantz told MidPoint.
“That seems like a long time but when you live marginally economically you end up taking on a significant amount of debt you end up in situations where you aren’t able to pay your bills,” he said. “Once people get behind it gets hard for them to dig out from under.”
You can listen to the entire interview here, or by searching for WMNF MidPoint wherever you listen to podcasts.
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