Cutting their own meals to once a day, counting last $110 in gas money, a newly jobless immigrant couple is among tens of millions in the U.S. struggling to feed family in pandemic.
Allison, 5, eats a lunch of refried beans, scrambled egg, and a handmade tortilla, at home, Wednesday, April 15, 2020, in Washington. It is the one meal a day that her mother can cook for their family, outside of cereal from a food bank that is quickly running out. With both of her parents out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic they will look each day for donated food to share. Most days it is a question of whether to pay for food or bills with the dwindling funds they have remaining.
Janeth and her husband, Roberto, are part of the greatest surge in unemployment in the U.S. since the Depression, setting off a wave of hunger that is swamping food programs nationwide. The couple and every adult member of their extended family in the U.S. have lost their jobs in the economic lockdown prompted by the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, food policy experts say, roughly one out of every eight or nine Americans struggled to stay fed. Now as many as one out of every four are projected to join the ranks of the hungry, said Giridhar Mallya, senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for public health.
When the global economy clamped down, Roberto, a cook in his mid-30s, and Janeth, who keeps water glasses filled at another restaurant and is in her mid-40s, spent $450 out of their final paychecks to stock up. Weeks later, their diminished cache includes two half-full five-pound bags of rice, an assortment of ramen noodles, a half-eaten bag of pasta, two boxes of cornbread mix, four boxes of raisins and cans of beans, pineapple, tuna, corn and soup.
On a good day recently, after Roberto landed four hours of work preparing take-home meals for a grocery store, they had enough for what constitutes a feast these days — a can of refried beans split three ways and two eggs each, scrambled. Janeth also made tortillas from their last half-bag of masa flour.
By day, they race in their second-hand pickup truck from food pantries and churches to relatives’ houses. They chase tips about food giveaways or temporary jobs. They share their painstakingly acquired cartons of food with her two sisters, who themselves have a total of five young children to feed, and call their grown children with leads on food lines.On a recent day, Janet and Roberto’s breakfast is coffee and a few crackers. Allison eats cereal, a favorite provided by a food bank.
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