In the case of Mapleton, Oregon, a small town on the central coast, just 527 people live there. They are faced with increasingly insurmountable challenges as rates of food insecurity skyrocket. Alissa, a 24-year-old local, grapples with the harsh realities of life in a community where poverty has reached alarming levels. She now pays $1,000 a month to live in what she describes as a “roach-infested” slum in her sister town. This shows an awful housing crisis that so many Americans contend with.
Alissa’s story is more than an individual experience. It tells the story of our region. In her last full-time job as a barista, she made $13.50 an hour. Unfortunately, that new income was not enough to afford daycare for her child. Fast forward to today and she’s turned to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits, receiving $250 last autumn. Her own benefits have been slashed on two occasions. First, because she got a part-time job and then mysteriously, that left her fridge nearly bare by November 10.
The issues that Alissa faced are just a slice of what’s affecting the folks in this community. With the only local food bank sometimes forcing clients to wait in overhead, 20-foot high lines, residents start lining up two hours before it opens. It’s a reality that underscores the growing need for emergency food assistance in Mapleton. Here, 44% of young families live in poverty, and the area’s overall poverty rate is at 22%, that’s twice the state average.
Adding to this distressing landscape is Alissa’s friend Mel, who has been employed by a major hotel company for the last seven years. After nearly two decades of dedicated work, Mel was denied SNAP and healthcare support after receiving a modest wage increase. This example highlights the often frail nature of support systems that people depend on. Alissa’s friend Kevin, who faces major challenges of his own, has his own stories. He’s unable to work now after being denied back surgery for a work-related injury.
Approximately one in six Oregonians depend on Snap benefits to buy groceries. This statistic reflects not only individual hardships but systemic failures affecting entire families and communities. Funding to support emergency food banks was slashed at the start of this year. Unfortunately, the stakes have only grown higher for the communities that rely on these essential lifelines.
“The amount of propaganda and gaslighting the government has been doing is sickening,” Alissa stated.
Alissa’s lived experiences serve as a powerful testimony to the harmful impact that government policy has made in worsening food insecurity. With 41 million Americans relying on Snap to make ends meet, she emphasizes that the challenges faced are not merely individual struggles but rather a systemic issue.
“It’s never me versus you, Democrat versus Republican, or Maga versus lib. It’s the people versus exploitation,” she remarked.
Her frontline perspective highlights the gulf that exists between policymakers and real lives affected by their policy choices. Few people have a sense of what families like Providence’s struggles are, day in and day out.
“There’s too many people that simply don’t have the insight into what life is really like for the majority of us,” Alissa added.
Alissa’s partner spends his free time hunting, a struggle to ensure they have enough food as resources continue to dwindle. This new dynamic is representative of how families have no choice but to adjust. They find opportunity in the spaces that the conventional workforce development system has let down. The cost of living keeps increasing faster than wages, forcing many people with bad outcomes into a stay-or-go dilemma.
With food banks stretched to their limits and government support not nearly enough, Mapleton residents face a cruel reality every day. Alissa’s case shows how badly the system needs to change. Local and national society need to tackle food insecurity and ensure families have the basic economic means to thrive.