Special Funding Will Provide Fresh Food Options for Needy Households

By Submitted Report
The Tube City Almanac
March 22, 2018
Posted in: Announcements

(Photo courtesy state Rep. Austin Davis, via Twitter.)

Allegheny County will provide an additional $250,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, officials announced Thursday.

The one-time funding will make items such as fresh meat, fish and dairy products available to food pantry clients --- items that are not usually purchased for distribution due to their cost, a spokeswoman said.

Lisa Scales, president and CEO of the Duquesne-based charity, was joined by state Rep. Austin Davis, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and state Sen. Jim Brewster for the announcement.

CDBG funds are administered to counties through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is the kind of thing the CDBG program is intended to do --- help improve the quality of life and economic prospects of economically distressed households and neighborhoods in Allegheny County and across the country,” U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle said in a prepared statement.

“I commend the food bank for taking the initiative to provide additional, healthier food choices to the people it helps, and I also commend the local officials who have allocated some of their CDBG funding to make this effort possible,” Doyle said, adding that the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, founded in 1980, has done "a consistently impressive job."

The food bank serves nearly 360,000 people in 11 counties every year, distributing about 26.5 million pounds of food annually through about 400 partner organizations.

The additional funding through Allegheny County will provide food to people served through 80 pantries county-wide that distribute about 200,000 meals every month, a spokeswoman said.

Scales thanked Fitzgerald and the county's Economic Development office for making the funds available.

“The Food Bank exists because growing numbers of people in our community struggle with meeting a basic human need – food,” she said, adding that the grant “will go a long way to providing healthy, nutritious food to our neighbors who need it the most.”

The food bank will use the money in part to test the market for healthier fresh-food options and build a case with its donors to fund those choices in the future, a spokesperson said.

Fitzgerald said that about 171,000 of Allegheny County's 1,225,365 residents, or roughly 1 out of 7, face what the U.S. Department of Agriculture refers to as "food insecurity" --- a lack of reliable access to affordable and nutritious food.

“We also know that the implications of hunger are even broader, impacting a child’s well-being, a person’s health, increasing costs to charities and losing productivity,” Fitzgerald said.

The additional CDBG funding will help the food bank's partners in Allegheny County provide healthier food to the families they serve, he said.

Originally published March 22, 2018.

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