A fortress against hunger
THE GREATER Boston Food Bank is about to double its capacity, building a new 110,000-square-foot home across the street from its current quarters, a few blocks from the Boston Medical Center. The building will have more storage space, more truck bays for food pickups and deliveries, and more cooler and freezer space for fresh produce and other perishable foods. There's enough capacity for the food bank to go from its current volume of distributing 26 million pounds of food to 50 million pounds.
This is a long way of saying that people living in Massachusetts cities and towns are still plagued by hunger.
Slated for completion in 2009, the new building is being erected atop a contradiction. For now, the food bank has to expand to meet demand: From 2001 to 2005, the number of people in Eastern Massachusetts seeking food assistance increased by 14 percent to a total of 321,000. That trend is likely to continue given that many families' salaries can't keep up with the local cost of living. But over time, policy makers should seek to end hunger -- and put food banks out of business.
Part of the challenge is the lack of a huge public outcry. Hunger shames the people it hurts, so there isn't a hungry people's political party pressing for change. Instead there's the silence of elderly men and women who are too proud to apply for food stamps; of working adults whose salaries stop short of covering enough groceries; of schoolchildren whose learning problems are hunger-related; and of hunger in the suburbs, the home of 52 percent of those seeking food help in Eastern Massachusetts, according to a study done by the nonprofit food bank network America's Second Harvest.
No single law or policy will single-handedly end hunger. Rather, it will take a dramatically rebuilt public system, not just distributing more food stamps, but building a broader infrastructure that promotes well-being. That would include more affordable housing, so people could spend less on rent and more on food, as well as better schools that send more students on to college and a chance to increase their lifetime earnings.
But since such a surge of public energy isn't imminent, the local food bank marches on. While it is running a $35 million capital campaign to pay for the new building, it is also preaching that just increasing calorie consumption isn't enough. People also need nutrient-rich foods or else they risk what could be called the American paradox: becoming both obese and malnourished.
So as the food bank's new building rises, it should be seen as both a step forward and a rebuke, a place that might have this sign: Welcome to the Greater Boston Food Bank. We wish we weren't here.
