Hunger in Plain Sight in Portage County

Patrick Childers (: 00:01

Odd Conduit Media

Patrick Childers (: 00:06

you

Patrick Childers (: 00:11

I remember one of the things that really struck me, it was haunting. It wasn't just one car, but several cars that showed up. And you can tell that this family had been living in their vehicle. And they had a couple of small kids in the back seat. They had blankets, they had pillows, you You scratch your head and say, my God, this is just one stop. How long is this food gonna last? Right?

insecure at some time during: 2023

This is my brother. Hi, I'm Ben. In this mini series, we'll explore the small corner of Northeast Ohio where we grew up, Portage County, and the food insecurity is experienced post-COVID. We'll take you through the network of folks working tirelessly to address food insecurity, even if that work seems to sometimes only make a small dent in the larger issue of hunger throughout the county. That's right. Throughout this series, you'll learn about how this issue affects so many people. We'll begin by meeting with civil servants who work for the county.

then move to the mid-size organizations that help connect the dots. Next, we'll see examples of food pantries in action. And finally, we'll finish the series by exploring the opportunities that folks have to help as individuals, citizens, neighbors. Along the way, we hope to show how each of these levels plays a distinctly integral part in a much-needed system, and how unifying all of these facets is so essential. Thanks for joining us. This is United Relief.

you

Patrick Childers (: 02:19

Ben and grew up in Kent, Ohio, a small college town home to Kent State University. When we were kids, we'd hop on our bikes and head downtown, a quaint shopping district along the Cuyahoga River, which spans about six blocks total. Aside from a handful of pubs and restaurants, many of which catered to the college students during the school year, you could find a music store, a hardware store, local banks, a comic book shop, and...

hand-woven clothes. Today, in: 2025

You'll first pass under a land bridge with train tracks and notice a rundown motel to your right, followed by an overgrown golf course and empty lots, pedestrians struggling to make their way along a road with no sidewalks. Past the Walmart, head over the bridge and you'll land in Ravenna, where quaint locally owned restaurants and shops are few and far between, and cars line the drive-up windows of fast food chains and drive-throughs where you can buy beer, milk, and cigarettes without ever exiting your vehicle.

Now, this kind of disparity is anything but unique to this region. And I will say this and I'll say this repeatedly. Anybody who looks at Portage County, I'm glad you guys are focused on Portage County. We are a microcosm of the country. Yeah, it is the most upside down county in Ohio. It's like the 86th out of 88th in terms of like income disparity, but also housing costs. it's just an inverted county. is. But what happens here is also reflective, I think, of what happens.

across the state and across the country. And so I think there are lessons that you can learn from Portage County that you can apply elsewhere. met with John in his office in downtown Ravenna, which perhaps looks similar to Kent's downtown a few decades ago. Historic brick buildings with mom and pop shops, some old, some new. He was happy to provide insights into the problems facing the residents of Portage County. Okay. And before I forget, John, could we have you introduce yourself and state your role? yeah.

Patrick Childers (: 04:44

John Kennedy, Portage County Treasurer. Perfect, thank you. When we get to his office, John greets us enthusiastically and he's ready to chat about the issues at hand, sparing us the small talk. He's a writer, he's a runner, he's a family man, and he's eager to share his experiences. I'll go back in time a little bit to 2020. That's when I really took up the issue because I think the pandemic revealed to all of us, it exposed sort of the systemic problems, I think.

ng for county commissioner in: 2020

o go back in time to March of: 2020

Patrick Childers (: 06:06

No NBA, no live music, no large gatherings at all. It's like the whole world stopped on a dime. I think we can all remember where we were when we realized this COVID thing is real. I'm running for office and right then we were told, look, no more door to door, no more getting out there in the field and talking to people. Right. Face to face. That's that's a no go. So what are you left with? Well, John started digging, researching, writing.

and possibly most importantly, reflecting as so many of us did when the isolation of quarantine began. So John, who's used to being out there in a field helping drive change in person, asked himself as a civil servant, what could he do? Where are we in this moment in time? What are the problems that we're facing? What do I need to learn more about? And the answer that he found was the glaring issue of food insecurity. The numbers he dug up were

unty from the ALICE report in: 2024

that estimates the cost of living and working in a given area, then estimates how many households cannot meet those costs. ALICE, an acronym which stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed, differs from the way that poverty is usually measured by the federal government, and that it looks more closely at the data on the ground, and then asks real questions. Questions like, even though someone's employed full-time, are they able to afford basic essentials? If the answer is no, then these folks are living below the ALICE threshold.

ty level in Portage County in: 2022

Patrick Childers (: 08:33

Kent City saw 60 % of its total households in Alice Plus poverty in 2022, which is actually more than Ravenna City at 53%. Either way, that's over half the population in both cities. So how does this translate to food insecurity numbers? The Akron-Kenton Food Bank has recent estimates available on their website, akronkentonfoodbank.org, which they've gathered through the Ohio Association of Food Banks 2024 statewide study of hunger in Ohio. And you can find all those links in our show notes.

Throughout the entire state of Ohio, over 50 % of households which visit food banks had to regularly choose between food and other essentials such as transportation, gas, utilities, and healthcare. So, what can local government do to help relieve this dire issue?

Patrick Childers (: 09:32

Okay, would you mind introducing yourself and stating your role, please? Yeah, yeah, I'm Christian Bennett. I'm a Portage County Commissioner here in Ohio, and I have been a commissioner since starting my 10th year. So Sabrina here is the second civil servant in Portage County that we had an opportunity to speak with who was kind enough to share some of her insights with us. I love my job. My whole job is I'm a public servant and I have 162,000

s when the Rescue Act Plan of: 2021

When COVID hit, a lot of people were displaced from work. They were sent home. And you know, that meant like for waitresses or people in the hospitality, if you don't work, you didn't get money. And so we were seeing huge increases and demands for food at the pantries. And so we talked to our advisors and said, hey, this is an issue we are seeing and we would like

e American Rescue Plan Act of: 2021

then you could potentially have to pay the money back. So once we got that all in place, we met with the food pantries throughout Portage County. And at that time, I think everyone was just scrambling with the smaller pantries. Most of them are volunteers. So they didn't always have the background and the knowledge through after about a year, year and a half.

Patrick Childers (: 11:52

we still had a lot of money that some of the pantries that were awarded funds were not using up. And so we reached out to them and said, hey, you you got this money, you know, do you need help? We're here to help you so that you could get the money. And at the end of the day, we decided to take the balance of it and give to the Akron Food Bank because they were set up that they could track the money, they could track the food.

and that our folks could go there. They still get it for free, but they don't have to do all the paperwork.

So that is something, you know, we realized there was a big need for, we tried to address it. It was very fluid. We had never done anything like this because as far as like food insecurities and stuff at the county level, it's all taken care of through JFS. Which is jobs and family services. for those of you unaware, JFS gets most of their funding through the federal government and it has a lot of requirements. You have to be within a certain income level, certain assets can disqualify you.

ARPA money was a one-time deal, and Sabrina can't just take a million dollars out of her general fund because all the food insecurity relief is run through social service agencies like JFS. Which sounds fine if you meet their requirements, but the problem we have now is... It's not necessarily low to moderate income people. We have working people that are supplementing at food pantries. You know, they own houses, they have, you know, but they just can't make ends meet.

you had this acute issue with COVID where it was just happening and you were reacting in the moment, problem solving. But thinking you and your leadership role in the county, food insecurity seems to have been something that you have been working on long before COVID. And we were wondering if you could help set a bit of the stage around food insecurity in Portage County, thinking a little before COVID and what it looked like. Yeah, and a lot of our issues is

Patrick Childers (: 13:54

Portage County is so spread out and we have a lot of rural communities. The problem is the rural areas, they are definitely food deserts, by definition a food desert is 20 % low to moderate income of a specific community that's a mile or more away from a grocery store. Things we take for granted that we can just...

you know, hop in my car and go, or if I lived in the city, I could hop on the bus. Well, guess what's not out in the rural areas? Yeah, there's just no public transit out there. saw a lot of that. And so we have what we call pop-up pantries that have come to Portage County. But like I said, one thing that we did do is that we got the farmers markets to be able to take the SNAP benefit cards so that they could go get

produce. That's one thing that we were able to do because that's the biggest concern is they're eating all this processed stuff because that's what's cheap and they're not getting vegetables and fruits for young children that need it. It's all canned. There's definitely no substitute for nutritious foods. Yeah. So you are a small business owner. You're in realty. How does your experience as a small business owner inform some of the strategic thinking that you

bring to the table for the county? By monitoring and data-driven decision-making, which a lot of the pantries, they're the boots on the ground. I I could look at data all day, but some of it's good. Some of it could be skewed for one reason or another. And so if you really want to know what's going on, you go to the source, right? The people that are serving, the folks that are.

are in a food crisis. And so by utilizing the data, they can track the food supply trends and demand, and then they can also track waste patterns to help optimize resource allocation and improve program impact. Once we identify a problem, then we either get together with our team within the county or a much bigger issue like this.

Patrick Childers (: 16:13

we collaborate with the public and private sectors. So an example of that is one of the things that we do fund is we fund the Ohio State Extension and they offer all kinds of programming, how to be self-sustainable and they teach you how to grow certain things and these classes are all free.

and we fund them every year. And then, you know, a lot of our communities are doing like the community gardening or the community plots where you can go garden. I know Ken's big on that because that's the only way some people are going to be able to get fresh fruits and vegetables is if they have like a community garden. And that seems to have been a success.

Patrick Childers (: 17:04

People weren't talking about it. People weren't recognizing it. And here the problem existed in plain sight. So we're back with John Kennedy, who's been filling us in on how he approaches relief as a treasurer, recounting his success helping a nearby township find funds via government grants for a necessary, yet really expensive overhaul of their sewage system, which the citizens of this township were on the hook for. Securing funds for that project allowed these folks to have money for their basic needs, like medical expenses or

food. It's all interconnected. He addresses raising housing costs, property taxes, and cites that his main job is a promoter of the services that his office offers, like their low interest loan program, and directs people in need to the many services available to them. There are in fact plenty of organizations that dedicate their existence and their mission to solving this problem. Statewide, countywide.

In Northeastern, Ohio, like I said, we are blessed with a number of orgs here who are in this space working on this problem. But one of the things that I want to stress with you guys is that's all great and good, but it surprises the hell out of me that more people still don't know these programs exist. Yeah. So what do you think is the

Is the barrier there? mean, do people not see these programs? the people on your level of all of this, do they not see what's going on? This problem has been right in front of us, but we haven't, we haven't addressed it. think in a comprehensive way. And I think that's one of the things that we have to all collectively do a much better job at is staying connected.

all these organizations instead of being in silos, kind of breaking out of that silo mentality and saying, we have reached our threshold of what we can deliver, but this other organization can help you with this. Easier said than done with anything. You know how difficult it is to do collaboration of any kind. could take three friends.

Patrick Childers (: 19:26

and say, hey, let's collaborate on this idea. Right. Exactly. It's not easy. So now put that in a county structure. Again, the challenge would be pulling people out of these silos, putting them into a space where you could cross collaborate and spread good ideas and kind of come up with some things that are not duplicative. Right. And things that ways to promote programs that have been here, right? They've been here. We promote them.

We do outreach work through our different channels and contacts. And yet we're still reaching only a fraction of the folks who are in need. That's what keeps us up at night, is the people that have a need who don't reach out to us, who are for one reason or another not informed or maybe too ashamed to ask for help.

Patrick Childers (: 20:30

So it's clear that our public servants are aware of poverty and food insecurity and that there are a lot of organizations working to relieve these issues. The question is, what does it take to pull them all together to allow for maximum impact? Now, civil servants such as John and Sabrina are working actively to find funding, connect the dots, and make this unification a reality. And throughout the rest of the series, you'll learn about some of the organizations and the people in them doing their part to fight these issues and get our neighbors fed.

. So the food bank started in: 1982

And it was formed actually by a group of community members who realized that there was no easy and effective or efficient way to collect surplus food in our region and distribute it to people in need. Basically, they decided to pull their resources together, create a centralized hub, and this allowed them to streamline their asks to the various retail partners, manufacturers, wholesalers in the area that were getting rid of surplus food, going to the landfill, and instead bringing it back to one facility.

to get it out to charities that were distributing foods to people in need. And you'll hear more about that impactful work next time on United Relief.

Patrick Childers (: 22:03

Thanks for joining us. United Relief is an odd conduit media production developed and produced by us, Ben and Patrick Childers. It's edited, mixed and mastered by Patrick, with fact-checking by Dash Lewis, story editing by Jenna Marson, and artwork by Migs Sunny. The series contains original music and sound design by L.T. Headtrip. This episode also has music written and performed by Basil and the Supernaturals. Special thanks to United Way Portage County in Ohio.

United Way is an international organization with 1,200 chapters in the U.S. alone. If you or someone you know are suffering from food insecurity and live in the U.S., we encourage you to dial 211 or visit 211.org and find out what services are available to you. They're here to help. You can also reach out to your local food bank. You'll find a list of food banks throughout the U.S. at feedingamerica.org. If you're eager to help, you can go to unitedway.org and find your local United Way. You can also discover volunteer opportunities through 211.

Get in touch with your local representatives to find out what they're doing to help relieve food insecurity in your area and how you can pitch in. Also, don't forget to meet your neighbors and ask what you can do in your immediate community. Find the links in our show notes. If you have an untold story about community impact and are looking for help telling it via podcasting, contact us at services at oddconduitmedia.com. And you can learn more about us on the web at oddconduitmedia.com.