How a return to pre-pandemic rules may be causing thousands of Sonoma County kids to go hungry

Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare for The Press Democrat and is Report for America corps member. The national service program was founded to help staff local newsrooms in need of more reporters covering their community. The Press Democrat is one of only approximately 60 newsrooms nationwide chosen to host reporters in 2023. The Report for America program is an initiative of the GroundTruth Project.

Twelve kids filled the small communal cafeteria at the Lavell Village Apartments in north Santa Rosa Wednesday afternoon to pick up free lunches.

Sisters Martha and Lizzet Solorio stood by and peeled oranges as the children — who are enrolled in the Solorios’ yearlong day care program — chowed down on turkey sandwiches, cherry tomatoes and milk.

The meals came from Redwood Empire Food Bank, which operates in partnership with Santa Rosa City Schools under the statewide Summer Food Service Program, providing free meals to children under 18 across 22 sites during the summer.

In the grip of the pandemic, schools, apartment complexes, libraries and other public locations functioned as pickup sites for families in need. In 2020, the food bank distributed just over 85,000 meals, then 150,000 the following summer.

This year, however, food bank officials estimate they’ll serve only about 30,000 meals by summer’s end.

This does not mean there are suddenly tens of thousands of kids who are no longer hungry. Rather, the drop-off is the result of expiring pandemic waivers that had made it easier for low-income children to get meals.

The restoration of pre-pandemic rules, which are far more restrictive when it comes to access to free meals, occurred halfway through last summer’s program and weren’t immediately felt.

This is the first full summer they have been in effect, and those who work to ensure children don’t go hungry say the impact is severe.

The rules now require that children be present at donation sites and eat their meals at the sites, and they are not allowed to take food home.

Regulations that defined what constituted a distribution site also have been tightened, forcing at least 20 of the 40 sites served by Redwood Food Bank to close. This year, an additional five sites have closed because of poor attendance, likely the result of parents who are unable to comply with the new rules.

“This has probably been our trickiest summer lunch in a few years because last summer we got to use those waivers from the USDA,” said Allison Goodwin, Redwood Food Bank director of programs.

“Without having the waivers in place, the program doesn’t meet the needs of a working family,” she said. “We risk families going hungry and kids going hungry over the summer.”

Local partnerships

Some of the Redwood sites that serve food this summer work with the Boys & Girls Club and Santa Rosa Recreation & Parks to provide free lunches for every child enrolled in summer programs at local elementary and middle schools. While the campuses are open to walk-ins, volunteers say it’s rare that community members come.

Kids who aren’t in these programs — which fill up quickly — can turn to donation sites at a handful of Burbank Housing low-income apartment complexes in the Santa Rosa area.

But with the rollback of waivers and closing of donation sites, children and parents have a harder time finding help near where they live.

In addition, the California Department of Education waited until July 13 to update 2023 summer meal sites in Sonoma County on their website, and their app — CA Food for Kids — also had not been updated, making it difficult for parents to know which sites are actually open.

Martha Solorio and her sister run a day care program out of their Lavell apartment, and bring as many as 14 kids to eat lunch every day. Last summer, instead of bringing all of them to the main office, she could grab a bundle of lunches and take them back to their day care.

Solorio said many of the children they watch come from low-income families. Most parents work at least one job; some are juggling work and school; and some are single-parent households, she said.

“Now that we’re out of the pandemic, the parents have to go back to work,” making it almost impossible for younger children to get to pickup locations, Solorio said.

Solorio remembers more kids from the complex joining her day care at the lunch tables last summer.

“There are kids who love and enjoy coming, but they can’t anymore because their parents don’t have a way to get here. So I think I’m very fortunate to be able to bring all of these kids here,” Solorio said.

Other barriers

The expired waivers and restored rules aren’t the only barriers that keep kids from getting the nutrition they need. There are long-standing cultural pressures as well.

Dalia Villagomez, a volunteer at Burbank Housing’s Cypress Ridge site in southeast Santa Rosa, says there’s often a refusal from families when it comes to free resources, contributing to an empty communal kitchen on donation days.

Villagomez and her mother, Estela Pulido, volunteer most days, sitting patiently between noon and 12:30 p.m., guarding a large blue insulated bag filled with free lunches. On Tuesday, not one family showed up during lunchtime.

After attendance began sagging, Pulido started bringing the help directly to families.

On Tuesday, she waited until the official distribution time was over, then carried the unused lunches to the apartment of Martha Suarez and Alba Olascoaga.

Olascoaga opened the door and greeted Pulido with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Villagomez says the community is tight-knit at Cypress Ridge. Her mother knows which families have children and makes sure lunches don’t go to waste.

Several children approached Pulido at the door, thanked her and grabbed their lunches before returning inside to eat.

“They don’t come because they are intimidated,” Villagomez said. “Sometimes Hispanic people just don’t like to ask for help.”

Empty donation sites don’t indicate a lack of need, Villagomez said. It may say something more about the accessibility of the program’s overall set up.

Because of the low attendance at Cypress Ridge, only five meals are allocated. When the waivers were in place, more meals were designated at each location, and a much greater need was met, whether through direct pickups from parents or through resourceful systems like the one that Pulido has setup.

Across town near Larkfield, volunteer Guadalupe Chavez handed out lunches to the Solorio Daycare children at Lavell Village Apartments.

After everyone had been served, she walked over eight lunch bags and eight milk cartons to an apartment on the outer edge of the property.

Tiffany Blossom answered the door, and the sounds of her early-age day care could be heard from the doorstep.

Blossom runs the Baby Blossom Daycare, which serves eight children between the ages of 1 and 2. Before the pandemic rules expired, she could pick up meals from Chavez at the main office and bring them back to her apartment.

But now, because the children she watches are so young, she can’t bring all of them with her to the communal kitchen during lunch hours.

“We have our routine here and sometimes if I brought them all over there, I’d have to bring the high chair for the 1 year old … it’s just complicated,” Blossom said.

She is also a parent of two school-age children and has used the program in the past to get meals for her daughters.

“Being a single parent, it's easier to have that helping hand than to not have it,” she said. “The stress of not having to worry about where your kids are going to have lunch — because you're already figuring out breakfast, you're figuring out lunch, on top of that you’re working — it's a lot.”

No reimbursement

Historically, any meals not picked up during serving time would be thrown away, but a rule change in 2019 before the pandemic allows excess food to be donated.

Goodwin said the donated meals are not counted toward attendance, so it's impossible to know how many children are being fed by volunteers like Pulido and Chavez.

“Those are considered ‘rescued’ meals, meaning they're not going in the landfill but they’re (also) not counted as children served through the summer meal program, because technically they weren’t,” Goodwin said.

That also means the food bank receives no reimbursement for the leftover meals, creating an out-of-pocket cost, she said.

In May, California Gov. Gavin Newsom allotted a one-time boost of $60 million for food banks across California, to continue to support rising needs.

Statewide data shows families that experienced food insecurity in 2020, 2021 and 2022 are now facing more stress, caused partly by inflation and partly from expiring emergency pandemic assistance.

USDA spokesperson Julie Yee said the waivers made the Summer Food Service Program “one of the largest child nutrition programs during the pandemic.”

Yee said data showed an increase of nearly 1.16 billion meals served across the nation from pre-pandemic to the 2020 fiscal year, when waivers went into effect. That number nearly tripled the following year, when 3 billion meals were served.

She would not comment on the decision to return to pre-pandemic practices.

Goodwin said the new guidelines caught her and others by surprise. She said USDA officials notified her at the “eleventh hour” that the food bank would have to enforce the pre-pandemic requirements.

The food bank is advocating for the reinstatement of waivers. Some rural counties in California have already seen a return to mid-pandemic rules.

“We were just (hoping) that those waivers stayed in place in some way because if this is really, truly a hunger relief program, that was the way to do it,” Goodwin said.

Goodwin says a need for food assistance is ever present, as many of the food bank’s grocery donation sites still see long lines of families looking for supplemental groceries.

“It’s important for people to be thinking about hunger in July and not just between November and December when we’re thinking about getting together with families,” Goodwin said. “It’s really important that people realize hunger is year-round.”

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@PressDemocrat.com.