Anson Stevens-Bollen
Volunteers at the Food Depot in Santa Fe sort and prep food for deliver in July 2019.
Organizations around the city that rely partially or heavily on volunteers saw a drop in participation last week as fears around the community spread of COVID-19 hit.
Edward Archuleta, executive director of St. Elizabeth Shelters & Supportive Housing, which runs several overnight and long-term shelters, tells SFR a lot of volunteers canceled because they "don't feel safe coming in" and being around people in close quarters.
The shelter currently has 28 guests and around six staff members, which is its maximum capacity. Archuleta says there is "no way" St. Elizabeth's can do social distancing because they are all in one building. But the shelter is taking as many other precautions as possible, such as constantly disinfecting high-touch areas throughout the day, using hand sanitizer and masks and taking the temperature of everyone who enters.
"We're all in this together," Archuleta says. "We can't close down. We can't send these people out into the streets."
The shelter needs healthy volunteers to help with front desk work and cooking but "any way would be great," according to Archuleta.
Sue Carr, assistant to the executive director for the Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete's Place, tells SFR they are "looking for any volunteers."
"If they're not worried about their age, I'm not worried about it either," Carr says. "We'll take anybody at this point… People want to volunteer, but aren't able to do so because of health reasons or they traveled recently."
Carr tells SFR on Friday the shelter is short about five volunteers for shifts that start in the evenings but that it will continue to operate. If a guest arrives at the shelter with symptoms, they are referred immediately to La Familia Healthcare for the Homeless, she says.
Homeless shelters are not the only cog in Santa Fe's network of important community supports that are struggling to find volunteers.
The Food Depot, Northern New Mexico's largest food bank, has been encouraging volunteers to cancel if they are "high risk" individuals or have traveled out of state recently.
Jill Dixon, director of development for the Food Depot, tells SFR while she doesn't have a number of volunteers they need to continue operating as before, they do need low-risk and healthy people to repackage food for distribution and to actually distribute food.
Since COVID-19 hit New Mexico, the Food Depot put social distancing practices in place for the volunteers. People have to be at least 6 feet apart, only a certain number are allowed in one space at a time and volunteers are screened for symptoms before they can enter. There are also more frequent cleanings and volunteers and staff use gloves and masks, though they have only a limited supply of both.
But more than a drop in volunteers, Dixon is concerned about Santa Fe's most vulnerable low-income residents, many of whom live on the Southside. They rely on the Food Depot's food distributions to survive. Parts of the southern and western parts of the city are a food swamp and food desert, where those with little resources and no transportation already struggle to buy fresh, healthy food.
In order to combat recent shortages at grocery stores as people stockpile essentials, the Food Depot is working on a strategy today to try to increase food distribution to seniors and public schools. The food bank wants to include groceries to take home as well as the prepared meals already being served.
"People who were economically vulnerable before this are even more so now," Dixon says. "They couldn't build up a two-week supply of food. As people hoard things, we have a population of people who couldn't make preparations at all. They didn't have the money to do so."
Dixon hopes the federal emergency relief bill, which just passed the US House of Representatives, will pass the Senate this week in order to stop new Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) restrictions from going into effect on April 1. SNAP is the largest federal food access program. Across the state, over 450,000 people use SNAP benefits each month, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
If the restrictions go through, it could create a "hunger crisis" if people who are suddenly unemployed because of COVID-19, such as service workers or those who are forced to stay home with young children not in school, are subsequently kicked out of the SNAP program.
"Food is one of the first things to go," Dixon tells SFR. "We are expecting demand [for food] to increase now and persist long into the future."
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