SOS and Unity Kitchen Provide Essential Safety Net
By David Bolling
Hunger has been a publicly-recognized issue in the United States since the Great Depression when 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed, vast quantities of farm produce rotted in the fields and many millions of people were underfed and under nourished.
Of course, if you lived on a farm you could easily survive, but not if a bank took the property, as happened all over the Dust Bowl. California’s Imperial Valley – as has famously been reported – lost 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes, 2.8 million watermelons and 1.4 million crates of cantaloupes during 1932 because they couldn’t be sold and there was no system in place to harvest and distribute them. That was then. Today, in the United States, not that much has changed. In 2023, 47.4 million people in the U.S. were food insecure, which is 13.5 percent of all households. In Black communities the numbers are worse. In 2023, one in four Black people experienced food insecurity, and according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than nine million Black people could not access enough food to lead a healthy, active life.
Meanwhile, today in America, between 30 and 40 percent of all food is wasted. The cost of that food is multiplied by the wasted resources used to prepare, store, process, transport and dispose of it. The nonprofit ReFED estimates the economic cost of all that waste was $473 billion in 2021.
So as we confront another winter of food insecurity, and its perpetual partner homelessness, we are continuously struck with the painful irony of having hunger all around us while being awash in a sea of excess food.
In Sonoma Valley, the emergent source for finding some daily food security, is the Unity Kitchen run by SOS, aka Sonoma Overnight Support, at 17400 Sonoma Highway.
The overnight support part of the nonprofit’s mission has waned as homeless housing initiatives sputter on and off without the resources to broadly sustain them, but feeding people has only grown.
By the end of the year, SOS will have served 78,000 meals in its year-old Unity Kitchen (6,000 meals a month, 350 meals a day) to 1,190 unique individuals, of whom 23 percent are homeless, according to SOS executive Director Kathy King. That figure translates into about 274 homeless people living in Sonoma Valley, a firsthand figure that contradicts the official Sonoma County tally of 88 local homeless people. That estimate followed the County’s January 2023 homeless head count which, insists King, is “way off.”
SOS has no temporary housing resources for its clients, but it partners with other agencies to provide transitional and temporary housing, along with a wide range of services and resources to help challenged residents navigate their lives.
Services include occasional financial help from a Client Fund for dealing with immediate emergencies. The organization also provides vouchers for clothing, gasoline, busses and taxi rides; tax help, haircuts, vaccination clinics through the Community Health Center; showers; free cell phones; free water bottles; snacks to go; and a warm place to escape the winter cold or the summer heat.
Besides the healthy, pre-packaged meals served from 9 to 1 Monday through Friday, the agency delivers more than 450 meals each month to seniors living in the Springs. There are no conditions to qualify. The Unity Kitchen meals can be taken out, or eaten in the clean, well-lit dining room.
All these services cost money, and the cost keeps increasing. King says the bags and clamshell containers required for serving the food, alone cost $35,000. The prepared meals cost $6.25 each and total cost for the year is more than $100,000. The City of Sonoma has committed to providing $50,000, but has not as yet delivered, says King.
Numerous services, agencies and businesses contribute food and Elaine Bell Catering, which recently closed its doors, contributed much of its remaining food stocks, including, says King, 4,000 raviolis and 4,000 tapas.
The organization survives off private donations and King has just launched the annual appeal, which can be accessed online at sonomaovernightsupport.org.
And so the paradox persists. In one of the wealthiest places in California – and therefore the world – food insecurity grows, homelessness continues, and, for many hundreds, the primary safety net is SOS.
Be First to Comment