More Iowans are hungry for the holidays

Jackie, a long time volunteer at Urban Dream food pantry, is busy handing out gray plastic shopping bags in between stocking shelves. She greets everyone warmly, asking about family members and ailments. The typical fresh produce, meat and pantry items today are interspersed with holiday baked goods.

Tatum Clayburn is the manager of business operations and community outreach at Urban Dreams. “Pre-shutdown, we were about 200 people a day, and that went up to around 300 a day when the government was shut down. We were seeing a lot of first-timers. People who had never been to a food pantry before.”

Hunger in Iowa is at unprecedented levels. All 99 counties have seen food insecurity increase. One in eight Iowans are food insecure, for Latino and Black Iowans, the numbers are significantly worse, at 21% and 30%.

Holiday celebrations highlight that food is intrinsic to society and culture. It connects us, it grounds us in tradition. It is part of our humanity.

However, food policy in America and in Iowa in particular is yet another way that humanity is being stripped away from some of our neighbors. Food boxes were an epic fail, but Iowa has still managed to restrict choice, ignoring the context of people’s lives.

Clayburn appreciates being able to treat pantry recipients as human beings. “Giving them some personal autonomy to kind of decide what they're getting, I feel helps a lot. And the joy of hearing someone say, ‘oh, I get to give my baby a birthday cake for the first time in two years.’ It's small stuff that keeps me waking up and coming to work every single day.”

When did the need to assert power over people’s plates become so Draconian? Public Law 199-21 at 331 pages is definitely big, but its beauty is really only in the eye of a quite possibly callous beholder.

For refugees, this law cut access to many benefits including SNAP.

Alison Hoeman started Des Moines Refugee Support in 2016. She often learns of emerging issues not by the news, but by word-of-mouth. “One of my board members was helping a family reapply for SNAP and the HHS person called her and was like, hey, this family doesn't qualify for SNAP.” She and her volunteers had to scramble. “It was unbelievable how much digging we had to do to find information about it, because it was not a headline anywhere.”

Refugees typically manage to navigate multiple hurdles throughout their transition to life in America. “So their resettlement agency got them all set up with SNAP. But then six months later, you have to reapply. You have to prove that you're still poor, basically, every six months,” Hoeman explains. “By then, the resettlement agencies are gone, right? Because they only have the ability to support people for just a couple months. And so the resettlement agencies are gone and people are getting this information in English in the mail that says, Hey, you have to fill out this 10-page thing with all the information from every single person that lives in your house. They don't know what it is, and so they ignore it, and then they lose their SNAP. And then in order to reapply for SNAP, it's now a 20-page form.”

“Refugees have literally been invited to make a new home in our country. They've been told, you've done all the vetting, you've gone through all of the processes and you've passed at every juncture, you are good to go.” Hoeman is frustrated that aid has been ripped from them abruptly. Organizations like hers are trying to piece together food assistance in a landscape this is inconsistent, hard to get to, and many times, culturally inappropriate.

Des Moines Refugee Support has been able to adapt to changing needs by avoiding federal funding. “We are 85% funded by individuals. Because of that, we are not beholden to the rules of federal money,” Hoeman said. While they honor requests for earmarked funds by donors to go to anything from food to soccer fees, they have been agile in responding to emerging needs. “When a thousand Afghans showed up at the end of 2021, we completely pivoted to like Afghan resettlement agency. We got furniture into homes, kids signed up for school. We delivered a lot of food.”

Hoeman took a mother of one of her soccer kids to an appointment and afterward asked if they should stop at Walmart to get food. Throughout the entire shopping trip, “she's tentatively asking, ‘can I get this’? Some people would eventually be like, OK, like she says I can get whatever, but she would every single thing, she asked, is this OK? In the end, she had about $120 worth of Walmart groceries, it was all very healthy, and just staples. We get out to the parking lot and she gets down on her hands and knees and is touching my feet with her hands. She is saying, ‘Asante, asante, mama, asante.’ This poor woman, she was one that really broke my heart.”

One of our founding fathers scribed, “Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now." Hunger is a classic tool for political control, and one that America is increasingly willing to wield.

Hoeman, yet, is optimistic. “We have so many great people that just want to be helpful. There's a lot of good people in the city and the state.” She wants to assure that they do not get overshadowed by people hiding behind computer screens while making disparaging comments.

Clayburn emphasizes the need to leverage systems that exist in aid organizations. “Being an established food pantry and having connections with the Food Bank of Iowa, we can get 700 pounds of food for $20. So even if you only have $5, you could feed an entire neighborhood for two days through us.”

You can contribute to Des Moines Refugee Support year-round.

Chris Espersen is a Gazette editorial fellow. chris.espersen@thegazette.com