By Melissa Wagoner
In the Willamette Valley, the need for support services like food and shelter has been growing.
“Our recent annual report reflected that the 2023-24 fiscal year was the busiest year in our 40-plus year history…” Jean Hubbard – board vice president of the Stayton Community Food Bank (SCFB) said. “The number of households served in 2023-24 is 34 percent more than the year before and 92 percent more than just two years ago.”
Similarly, in 2023 Silverton Area Community Aid (SACA) saw 7,593 visits to the food pantry with an additional $396,108 provided in financial assistance. And Sheltering Silverton recorded 231 dinners served on the premises with an average of 16 overnight guests between January and August.
“Higher costs for food, utilities and transportation, and the end of extra financial support available to families during the COVID pandemic are key factors driving this growth and contribute to fluctuations during the year,” Hubbard said.
Environmental changes, such as an increase in wildfires, ice storms and heat events, have become additional contributing factors.
“We’ve had climate refugees come to us,” Sarah White, founder and executive director of Sheltering Silverton, said. “We’ve had people coming from Paradise [California] and Beachie Creek. Climate impacts the housing market and so that’s on our radar.”
An ongoing housing shortage and rising home prices means more people are finding themselves living on the edge of poverty and especially vulnerable to crisis.
“There are a lot of people without support and they are doing OK during regular life, but not during an emergency,” White said, recalling how the COVID pandemic and wildfires of 2020, along with the ice storm and heat dome of 2021 prompted the area’s aid providers to begin taking a serious look at the role they would play should an emergency become community-wide.
“There’s the official emergency response and then there’s the aid piece,” White explained. “The wildfires showed us how quickly these pieces come together.”
Despite its location in the cramped basement of Silverton’s Community Center for the past several years, Sheltering Silverton functioned as an emergency drop-site during the wildfires, coordinated generator loans during the ice storm and opened a cooling center during the heat dome. But since the opening of the new shelter, located on McClaine Street, the organization has worked to become increasingly emergency prepared.
“I feel like we’re in a really good place when we have weather events…” White said, adding, “[In Silverton] our number of weather-related injuries are low.”
Struggling with facility challenges throughout its 74-year history, SACA is also looking forward to opening new headquarters in the 12,000 square foot building on First Street that previously housed the Ratchet Brewery.
“By nature of what we do we are a resilience hub. We’ve been thinking about that for many years – how SACA plays an important role during a crisis,” executive director Sarah DeSantis said. “But over the last few years our facility has limited our response.
“This [new] facility opens up ways to serve our community and allows us to go down the path of preparing because we could leverage the space to both distribute food and potentially be a shelter.”
That’s important because, according to the City of Silverton’s Emergency Management Advisory Committee, maintaining access to food and sheltering services on both sides of Silver Creek is a critical part of the community’s emergency response. Now, with Sheltering Silverton relocated to the same side of the creek as Silver Creek Fellowship’s Mission of Hope food pantry and SACA beefing up its emergency services, there will be.
“We want to create a robust system of care…” White explained.
It’s the goal of all aid programs, including the Stayton Community Food Bank which – though they too have experienced both facility and staffing challenges – was able to provide food assistance and “pantry package grants” to those affected by the Santiam Canyon fires in 2020.
“The Stayton Community Food Bank is an all-volunteer organization, dependent on the individuals of our community to volunteer their time and energy to make this all work…” Hubbard said. She described the current emergency management plan as a contact list of people willing to help in an emergency.
“The SCFB’s goal is to provide food to everyone who enters our doors hungry.”
