10
A 5.5% cut
Dozen eggs $2.50
on food
dollars a month worth of groceries
staff, who strive to always provide “nutritionally dense” meals. Taran worries about being able to do that. When I ask about the food-stamp cut, he told me, “We’re definitely anticipating an increase, and already saw a boost at the beginning of the month.” The food-stamp cut, a blow to any emergency food service, comes at a bad time for the Meals Partnership Coalition (MPC), which helps support meal programs throughout the city, including the OMS. In 2011 MPC lost a bid for city funding that had previously paid for an all-important coordinator position—someone to organize the chaos of providing hundreds of thousands of meals throughout the city each year. Instead, the money went to Solid Ground, the organization that runs most of Seattle’s food banks. Now OMS is trying to convince the city to provide $40,000 annually to pay for the support coordinator they used to have, to help manage the various contractors and volunteers and ensure that they can continue to offer food of the same quality. It’s a position that has always been funded for city food banks, which derive a majority of their funding from the city, but only periodically funded for meal programs. The discrepancy seems unreasonable, especially when you consider the service that OMS is still able to provide. Then last week, a proposal was accepted by the City Council to invest an extra $480,000—this time to go to meal programs like the OMS. But at the last minute, food banks were added as possible recipients. The council vote was scheduled for November 19, and advocates thought it would pass easily. But at the last minute, the proposal was simply wiped from the agenda. No vote, no money—and no one is really sure why. Graham called it “bizarre.” The Human Services Department’s Takami doesn’t know what hap-
Bananas $.65 Broccoli $2.00
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36
RICE
stamps is the equivalent of
bread $1.00
5 lbs.
If services seem random and chaotic, it’s because they are. As Reverend Bill KirlinHackett of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness would later tell me, “Food deserts are a real issue. There’s some [meal programs] around, but part of the problem is that they’re not all offered regularly.” By “food deserts” he means areas, geographic or temporal, where no food resources—like grocery stores, food banks, or meal programs—are available. Look at a map of the city’s meal programs, and you’ll see that most are downtown, with few or none in places like West Seattle or Rainier Valley. In some areas, like Magnolia or Mercer Island, this makes sense: The wealthy don’t typically need a free lunch. But in other areas, where emergency food services could greatly benefit a large percentage of low-income families (rather than only those without housing), there appears to be a severe lack of regular attention. During my 30-minute guest pass at the library (because I had no I.D. and no library card), I managed to create a rudimentary game plan—a breakfast, two lunches, and a dinner—and got addresses and times from a list on the city website. That Saturday, the only place I could conceivably walk to in time for lunch was the OMS, or Outdoor Meal Site, at Sixth Avenue and Columbia Street. I jotted down some notes on where I could get other meals and left the library quickly. I didn’t want to be late. The OMS has been in operation, unofficially, since 1994, when founder Beverly Graham took it upon herself to start feeding the city’s homeless directly, one person at a time. “I would walk around the city handing out sandwiches, or set up in the park and do the same,” she later told me. Graham’s service caught the attention of more than just people living on the street. “The city had an issue because I was giving out food without any sort of food-handler’s permit or licensing.” But instead of quitting, Graham used the city’s complaints and threats of fines as an opportunity to start a real meal program, Operation Sack Lunch, and a site for other providers to serve from, first located in the city’s Downtown Public Health Center and moving to multiple locations before ultimately finding the Sixth and Columbia spot underneath I-5. It’s a location some critics say is inhumane, because clients are served outdoors. But Graham says exposure isn’t always a problem. “Some of our guests are uncomfortable going into any buildings for any reason, often because of PTSD or other mental-health reasons. Our site allows them a place to eat.” In the nearly two decades since she started, the OMS’s impact has exploded; it’s now responsible for serving more than 170,000 of Operation Sack Lunch’s 400,000 meals a year, two of which were now in my lap. The contents of both bags were the same. Part of me felt excited to see what was inside, like an expectant child hoping for something decent in their packed school lunch. Maybe I’d get a Snack Pack I could trade with someone. But there was no Snack Pack. Each bag contained one plain croissant in plastic wrap, a chocolate cereal bar, a small bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, and a Capri Sun. The only item whose quality I could really judge was the croissant, which was mildly stale. I ate through one of the bags, and looked around to see how other people were reacting to their lunches. The couple to my left was feeding their
pened either. Dana Robinson Slote, communications director for the city council, says, “Council had limited funds with which to work, and had to choose among competing priorities.” If navigating the maps and schedules for meal services is challenging, trying to understand the inside machinations of money distribution for programs is even more daunting. One of the guests on my follow-up visit, a 41-year-old Forest Whitaker look-alike named Billy, backed up my impression of the OMS quality. “The food here is really good. It always is. It’s a lot better than some places, like Union Gospel. They’ll just throw anything into a pot and serve it to you.” I smiled. Six days and a few
caro Ma & n Cheese
2 lbs. of Cheese Gallon $6.00 of Milk 5 lb. Bag of rice $2.50 $5.79
i
SEATTLE WEEKLY • NOVEM BER 27 — DECEM BER 3, 2013
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croissant to an army of seagulls. No one seemed ecstatic about the food. When I went back to the site a week later to interview guests and the site coordinator, the scene was far different. (They also knew I was coming.) Fusilli pasta, fresh salad, and garlic bread was being dished up by a cheery line of fresh-faced volunteers. The difference in quality was likely due to scheduling. The site coordinator, Graham’s son Taran, explained: “We do three meals a day five days a week, and then subcontract out the weekend meals to various groups.” My Saturday sack lunch had come from one of their understudies. The best meals, it seemed, were served by Taran and Graham’s own
D I N N E R
Mac and Cheese $2.00 six Pork chops $15.00
hours earlier, I had been at the Union Gospel Mission for breakfast. You’ve probably driven by the Mission dozens of times. At the corner of Second Avenue Extension South and South Washington Street near Pioneer Square, it’s not the sort of place many people want to find themselves late at night. Its appearance is more stereotypical, more like the way many imagine a homeless shelter: Urban Robinson Crusoes line up outside among shopping carts, bearded lifetime backpackers jostle from foot to foot, and job-searching hopefuls fidget with their ties and hair. The fluorescent-lit foyer was humming during my undercover visit. To my left, in the hallway leading to the chapel, I saw the line for breakfast and joined it. To be honest, I was intimidated and a bit nervous. I knew almost nothing of that culture—what was acceptable, what behavior might irritate a population that had every right to be in a very shitty mood. Furthermore, I was worried that someone would question my place there. The thought of their reaction to my faking their very real lives was enough to make me keep my gaze on the floor and mind my own business. I felt safer inside, but there still seemed to be a tension—not helped by the hallway’s size, barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side. An older, Santa Claus–like gentleman came in and joined the line carrying five or six bursting bags of clothes and miscellaneous items, which blocked the doorway. With perfect timing, a grizzly 40-something in a denim jacket came down the hallway. “Get your fucking shit out of the fucking hallway, you piece of shit! Jesus fucking Christ, you’re blocking the whole fucking place!” Santa moved. Four days later, before a lunch catered by El Gaucho was served, another disturbance in that hallway—
supposedly an argument between two clients about money owed—resulted in the first-ever shooting at the Mission, luckily ending with no fatalities. Breakfast was announced and we filed into the cafeteria. It felt like a prison mess hall, crowded with long Formica picnic tables placed end to end. Each of us received a plastic tray of food from a silent staff. No choices, no smiles. I grabbed a glass of water and a banana, served by whom I assumed was a mother/daughter volunteer combo who stood rigidly behind the safety of their table. I sat down and examined my tray. A portion of what might have been at one time oatmeal was now merely a sticky carbohydratelike substance. “Gruel” may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Adjacent the “oatmeal” was an egg so dry I could have used it as my napkin, and . . . a sausage? Maybe it was a hot dog. All I can be sure of is that it was tube-shaped and emitted grease. My only salvation was the water and the banana, which was covered in black spots. Despite several efforts, I could not finish the meal. When I got up, it appeared several other guests were having similar reactions. I handed my tray to a staff member, who robotically banged it against the inside of a trash can and stacked it with the others. I walked out into the street, glad for the fresh air.
F
ood quality is one of the primary focuses of Seattle’s army of emergency food leaders. To be more specific, food safety is a central concern. During another talk with Rev. Kirlin-Hackett, he told me, “A big problem is safe food. With so many people preparing food without food-handler’s permits, we often worry about food spoiling.” He mentioned a scenario in which someone in Woodinville baked a potato and wrapped it in foil, then served it in Pioneer Square hours later. Graham told me the same, as did Taran. It was apparently a true story; a little research led me to the organization, Food Not Bombs, that had served the notorious potatoes. The problem is that after a few hours, foilwrapped baked potatoes are like Cancún on spring break, if Mexico was a potato and sorority girls were botulism. The consequences are graphic: Imagine a large population, living on the street, with food in their stomach that feels more and more like an actual bomb every second, ultimately contracting dysentery and diarrhea with few if any accessible public restrooms. KirlinHackett concluded, “It’s a problem.” I agreed. To avoid this kind of issue, the Human Services Department requires any organization that receives general funds for meal programs to employ staff members who have had food training. But sometimes—and more often around the holidays—good-Samaritan groups that have watched Pay It Forward too many times feel the need to pitch in and pass out food, health codes be damned. While their hearts are in the right place, many don’t realize that spontaneous, unsupervised meal handouts aren’t necessarily safe. Those not funded by the city are often protected by the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which holds donors non-liable for donating food. Still, Graham tells me, “The best thing for people to do is work within the system that already exists. That way we can help monitor food safety and have the benefit of additional support.” Union Gospel Mission, clearly the low point, made Recovery Café an easy choice for best meal of my weekend. It’s housed in the triangular building bordered by Denny Way, Boren Avenue,
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