Need for food, shelter rises as Sacramento economy falls

Programs that feed and shelter the region's down-and-out are reporting a spike in need in recent months, as a national economic downturn displaces more workers.

Some of those seeking help are renters whose landlords have lost houses to foreclosure. Others are laid-off workers who've overstayed their welcome on friends' couches. And still others are part- or full-time employees trying to stretch inadequate paychecks by accepting an occasional free meal.

Many are finding themselves in such situations for the first time.

"We are seeing the recession hitting," said Sister Libby Fernandez, executive director of the Loaves & Fishes homeless services complex on North C street. "We're really feeling that there's a lot of new faces."

In March, the organization handed out 672 lunch tickets a day, a 9 percent increase compared with January. Staff there expect the numbers to keep ticking upward.

The Sacramento region's unemployment rate climbed to 6.5 percent last month, the highest it's been in 11 years. But even for those who have jobs, the mismatch between wages and rising prices is proving increasingly difficult to ignore.

In October, the California Budget Project, a research group that advocates for working families, issued a report estimating that a single adult in the Sacramento region needed an annual income of $26,560 to support a modest standard of living. That jumped to $69,306 for a family with two working parents and two children.

Since the report was issued, food and gasoline costs have gone through the roof. As a result, Robert Matheson, 38, and his fiancee, Rachel Green, 23, say they just can't cover all their expenses anymore.

The couple, who were sitting on a bench waiting for the lunch bell at Loaves & Fishes earlier this week, said they both have jobs – he provides elder care 35 hours a week; she works as a cashier at a hardware store. Already, they'd been barely scraping by. Less milk and meat. Lots of cheap pasta. No more movies, not even rentals.

Then Green's hours got cut.

So there they were, on a sunny April morning, counting on a free meal to try to make it to the next paycheck.

"Our wages don't actually cover everything, they really don't," Matheson said. He paused. "They used to."

Tasha Norris, director of the WIND Youth Center for homeless youth in North Sacramento, said she senses a rising level of desperation among many of the new families her organization sees.

One family, Norris said, had rented the same home for 17 years. Then the bank foreclosed, and they were given notice that they had 30 days to get out.

"Your heart goes out to those folks," she said. "They don't have any abilities to survive out there on the streets."

Suzi deFosset, executive director of the Gathering Inn in downtown Roseville, said her shelter has taken in 20 percent more people in the past few months than at the same time last year.

"We are at capacity and that is unheard of at this time of the year," she said.

On Tuesday night, 60 people slept in the shelter – technically, the maximum number of spots is 50.

Ron Scroggins, 54, had arrived at the Gathering Inn's small courtyard with his fiancee a few days earlier. Not long before, he'd owned two homes and a small plumbing business in San Antonio, Texas. Divorce swallowed one home, he said; the bank took the other. Gas prices choked the life out of the plumbing business.

Angry at the oil companies and sick of Texas, he boarded a train to Sacramento. Work was harder to come by than he expected, and he quickly burned through his savings renting motel rooms. He filed for food stamps for the first time in his life. Finally, he made his way to the shelter.

"It was pretty humiliating," he said. "But I try to humble myself, because it could happen to anyone, I guess."

Also spending the night at the shelter was Lisa Jasmer, 40, a nurse and single mother who said she lost her job in 2006. Despite applying everywhere she could, she had trouble finding a new position. She pawned her pearls and the gold watch she'd inherited from her mother. She used up her retirement account. Then, in February: the eviction notice.

She packed her car with photos, a quilt her late mother had sewn for her and a pink Kitchenaid mixer – a last vestige of the life she was leaving behind. She dropped her 12-year-old daughter off at her dad's house, then slept in her car for a few cold, terrifying nights. She sought help at a church – someone there gave her a flier for the Gathering Inn.

Jasmer, who is planning to start a new nursing job in Chico on Monday, has stayed at the shelter for the past two months. During that time, she's come to appreciate how difficult it is to survive on the streets.

"I admire that strength," she said. "I didn't think I had it in me."

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• Call The Bee's Jocelyn Wiener, (916) 321-1967.