When Carla Schroyer began working at a new mobile food pantry set up to address the needs of people impacted by the Key Bridge’s collapse, she had a feeling it wouldn’t last.
“Once the port reopens, these crowds are going to be gone,” Schroyer said in July as she stood in 80-degree heat, hurling packages of food into open trunks and the sweaty arms of people who came for help. “People aren’t going to be needing us much longer.”
She was wrong.
Schroyer and her colleagues at the mobile pantry run by the Community Assistance Network say they’re still seeing a large demand in the area surrounding the terminal — only instead of port workers the need now lies with young families, many of whom are Hispanic and in the process of pursuing U.S citizenship.
“It’s turned into an access point,” she said, adding that the program has referred people to housing and medical services as well. “We’re able to penetrate the needs of the undocumented people better than we ever have been before.”
But that access is in danger of ending Jan. 25. William Wells, executive director of the Community Assistance Network, said the center’s pantry program is not expected to continue beyond the winter due to funding constraints, though there are ongoing conversations about extending.
After the Key Bridge collapsed, private funding flooded into the Dundalk area, including a $366,000 grant distributed by the Baltimore Community Foundation for a food pantry serving impacted business owners and port workers. Unlike other pantries, the program did away with the usual requirements needed for people to receive aid. It does not require a government-issued photo ID — a prerequisite to access most help, including housing vouchers and emergency food assistance.
The lines became long and winding even after the port reopened, with hundreds of people returning each week to the mobile unit’s three roving locations at 7900 E. Baltimore St., 958 Ashbridge Drive and 25 Eastern Blvd..
“It was impacting a population that we didn’t know how to impact previously. How do you yank that from under folks?” Wells said. His team is searching for a way to keep the program going, but he expects the competition for donors to grow increasingly tight as President-elect Donald Trump has promised to cut spending to federal safety nets. The claims of mass deportations have also made it more difficult to distribute aid, he said.
“If you’re creating an environment where people don’t feel comfortable giving their information or getting help because of what it may mean for their family, that’s going to exacerbate all the problems they’re already having,” Wells said.
The grant from Baltimore Community Foundation is one of the largest made by the donor group to a Key Bridge-related cause. They did not expect to offer multiyear funding but are continuing discussions.
Shanaysha Sauls, president and CEO of the Baltimore Community Foundation, was not surprised to hear the pantry found new audiences. The initial grant was used to support CAN Stands Ready because of the “surge of need they witnessed as a result of the Key Bridge collapse,” she said in a statement, and many of the port workers were recent immigrants.
One 26-year-old found out about the pantry from a friend in October, shortly after being laid off from a cleaning job. Five years after fleeing Honduras for Middle River, she struggled with getting food for her family, including a younger brother and two kids. “We tried to spend less, eat less food,” said the woman, who spoke through a Spanish interpreter and declined to be named due to her immigration status. “We weren’t able to use the [food] pantries; we’d be turned away.” With no citizenship or work permit, food stamps were off the table.
But, at the CAN Stands Ready pantry, all she needs is an address that proves she lives within one of six ZIP codes believed to be affected by the port’s shuttering. With that, the family walks away with fresh vegetables, bread, chicken — enough food to feed a household of four.
“I’ve seen at least three or four families by me who’ve been turned away from [pantries] because they didn’t have [a government-issued] ID,” said Francis Pizarro, who has faced the hurdles of citizenship herself, uses the pantry and works with new immigrant families in the neighborhood. “People use this one because the requirements are reasonable.”
Schools and churches are also an option for families with mixed citizenship, but Pizarro says they don’t offer the same degree of choice. Some boxes marked for vegetarians include seafood — a rarity for pantries and food banks due to the cost — and frozen chicken marked halal for religious restrictions, according to Thomas Dove, the pantry’s coordinator.
Maria Fonseca, who has been coming to the pantry since her husband lost his job in insulation in June, leans on the program to feed her household of six. Although she has a work permit, Fonseca is unable to drive, limiting her access to other assistance. She crosses her street near Eastern Boulevard to pick up a box of food every Tuesday.
“It’s been a long time since my husband has been able to find work,” she said through an interpreter. “I’m not sure where we would go if this [pantry] stopped.”
Fonseca, who has diabetes, said finding affordable healthy food has been difficult. Her eyes light up discussing the fresh broccoli and potatoes from her last box, or the frozen pork chops she ground into a carne molida, a Mexican dish of finely chopped meat. Or her favorite: caldo de pollo, a soup she makes whenever the pantry has frozen chicken legs.
“It’s a good feeling,” she said. “Feeling safe enough to eat.”
This story was updated.
This story has been updated to correct that the pantry was started to help people impacted by the Key Bridge collapse, which included port workers, and to clarify the Can Stands Ready pantry’s requirements around government-issued IDs.
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