By Sienna Bevan
In Santa Monica, homelessness is no longer just a problem, but a city-declared local emergency. While Santa Monica witnessed a 6% decrease in homelessness over the past year (according to LAHSA’s annual count), there was a dramatic 15% increase from 2022 to 2023. Moreover, California accounts for 28% of the nation’s unhoused population, which is nearly a 40% increase from five years ago. On July 25, however, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state officials to remove homeless encampments, meaning accessible resources are essential now more than ever. Throughout L.A.’s Westside, there are multiple agencies and organizations working on a local level to address this crisis. The Santa Monica Daily Press is taking a closer look at the services the city of Santa Monica provides, providing profiles and resources to help bring awareness to community members. This week's coverage is on the Westside Food Bank—take a look at SMDP’s website for more coverages.
One in three households in Los Angeles County experience food insecurity (as of December 2023), placing about one million households at a much greater risk of becoming unhoused.
The Westside Food Bank provides people with free, nutritious food on a consistent basis, and has been serving the westside of Los Angeles County for over 40 years. Although they don't work directly with unhoused people, they focus on homeless prevention through large-scale food assistance. They distribute almost 5 million pounds of food annually, having provided food for 72,000 households, or 153,000 people, in total.
Genevieve Riutort, the President and Chief Executive Officer, believes that the solution to homelessness is not to focus solely on getting current unhoused people off the street; it is equally important to work at homeless prevention. It is more expensive to re-house someone who loses their housing than it is to keep them housed.
“I think our work does a lot to prevent people from becoming unhoused in the first place because we can help them meet their basic needs so that they have more of their resources to apply to housing, rents, childcare and all of those other basic needs,” Riutort said.
In 2023, Los Angeles County found that 30% of households experience food insecurity, a meaningful increase from 17% in 2021. In the past few years, food costs have increased immensely, up 25.8% from late 2020. In addition to inflation, many beneficial government economic support programs that were available during the pandemic abated with the end of the COVID emergency.
The housing crisis is interconnected with food insecurity, which the Westside Food Bank is working to solve. They act as the “food bank hub” of the Westside of LA County, taking food and redistributing it to member agencies through a four step process: food acquisition, sorting, distribution, and nourishment. Of their 60+ member agencies—-community coalitions and multi-sector partners—most are engaged in grocery redistribution, handling some 90% of the food bank's food.
Santa Monica College, one of the Westside Food Bank’s partners, is a huge redistributor of food. They have tripled the amount of food they’ve received from the food bank over the past few years, aiming to service college students as well as senior citizens. With the help of the food bank—the largest provider of many of their core items—they now have an indoor food pantry, the Bodega, open five days a week.
While most of the Food Bank’s food goes to partner agencies, a small portion of their food gets distributed to the public directly. Through their Mobile Food Pantry program, they have five weekly direct service trucks that go into communities that their partner agencies don’t cover. They also have a few weekly pop-up food pantries located in Santa Monica, Culver City and the West LA area. The Virginia Park pop-up, which is a partnership with the City of Santa Monica, distributes to a little over 100 households. It occurs every Thursday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
A study done in 2021 and 2022 by the University of California, San Francisco surveying adults experiencing homelessness found that 70% of participants believed that an additional $300-$500 a month would have been enough to keep them from losing their housing. Coincidentally, $300-$500 is the amount of money the average American spends on groceries every month. In providing food for people in need, whether they be low-wage earners or unemployed, families with children or those with disabilities/mental health conditions, the Westside Food Bank is the difference that keeps some Westside residents from becoming homeless.
The Westside Food Bank’s food is touching clients on every step of their journey, helping them either on their road to recovery or keeping them stable, which Riutort strongly emphasizes. When she started at the Food Bank 20 years ago–a single mom providing for three young children–she was both food and housing insecure.
“It was really getting a job at the food bank that put me on a path out of poverty and being able to support my family,” Riutort said. “I was once a person who needed help and now I'm someone who gets to provide help. I think that's what we do in community—we take care of each other.”
Despite its successes, the Food Bank is in need of community help now more than ever.They have had to scale back their food distribution over the past year, despite a level of demand that is higher than prior years.
“I think there’s a complacency where people think that with the end of the COVID emergency, things are going back to normal, and they’re absolutely not. They’re worse—[...] the hunger crisis is now. So we’re struggling to get the message out that we need more funding, we need more volunteers, and we need more food donations.”
The Westside Food Bank has volunteer opportunities for both individuals and groups, either helping out in the warehouse or packing produce boxes. For group events or any inquiries, email volunteer@wsfb.org.
