Tens of thousands of people in Lane County survive on the edge, often unsure from day to day where their next meal will come from.

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Editor’s note: Some of the people who told us about their lives for this story are identified by a pseudonym* or by first name only.

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It’s Monday in late summer, just before noon. They stand in line in the parking lot on Eighth Avenue in front of Food for Lane County’s Dining Room. The former soup kitchen now operates as a sit-down restaurant with table service, cloth napkins, an attentive wait staff, live music and an attitude that long ago evolved from charity to community.

Monday through Thursday, more than 200 hungry people come to this modest brick building just west of downtown for a meal. For some, it may be their only meal of the day.

Near the front of the line is Mike*, a short-haired, clean-shaven mid-30s Army vet who worked full-time in construction until he was severely injured in a hit-and-run accident.

“Veterans Affairs helped me a lot,” he says. “I’m grateful. And my mother stepped in. But it’s been close to two years now.”

He is almost ready to go back to work. “But almost is not good enough. I need this place right now. I need this meal.”

Mike holds a scrap of paper with a number on it. When the number is called, he can come inside, sit at a table, a booth or at the counter. Inside, the Dining Room shows its pedigree. Many years ago, it was Govinda’s, a vegetarian restaurant. Now, the clientele is different, but the atmosphere and attitude of service remain.

Behind Mike, Lynn* waits her turn in line. She is a small, quiet woman, thinner than she should be, with a tentative smile. A 73-year-old former nursing assistant and sometime house cleaner, she now lives in subsidized housing and subsists on a modest monthly Social Security check.

Inside the Dining Room, she always chooses a counter seat where she can focus on eating — slowly, methodically and with pleasure — rather than talking with others. She cuts the chicken into bite-sized pieces. She puts her fork down in between bites. These noon meals are important, especially toward the end of each month. After she pays her rent and utility bills, she has limited funds — and far too often almost no money — to spend on feeding herself.

So she is here, at this unique facility operated by the organization that is the backbone of Lane County’s hunger-relief network. 

Food for Lane County is the second-largest food bank in the state with scores of programs — from Meals on Wheels to Children’s Weekend Snack Packs, from rural pantries to urban gardens, from nutritional education to job training — and a network of almost 150 partner agencies. The nonprofit solicits, collects, grows, rescues, prepares, packages and serves food for distribution to the county’s most vulnerable citizens. 

The mission is Herculean: End hunger.

At the Dining Room, the mission is more modest and more immediate: Feed hungry people who show up at the door. But it is more than that. 

“We serve generous portions of food. But even more important than that, we serve generous portions of dignity,” says Josie McCarthy, the long-time Dining Room manager whose vision changed the erstwhile soup kitchen into a restaurant.

The question is: Why is there a line of people waiting outside the Dining Room? Why are there so many hungry people in our county?

Understanding ‘food insecurity’

Lane County is Oregon’s fourth most populous county. But despite a major state university, a well-regarded community college, federal and state offices along with several large industrial employers, the county struggles with a higher-than-average poverty rate, which is tied to a higher-than-average rate of food insecurity.

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“Food insecurity” is a relatively new — and nuanced — way of looking at hunger. 

In the United States, extreme, devastating hunger and starvation is not common. But hunger is not a binary condition, hungry/not hungry. It is a continuum. 

People tend to experience hunger in a dynamic way, becoming more or less hungry depending on how much money they have to buy food, how accessible food is, and how easily they can get assistance if they need it.

Being “food insecure” means just that: From day to day, week to week, month to month, getting adequate food and nutrition is an ongoing uncertainty, an unstable balance that can tip at any moment. 

That uncertainty only intensified earlier this fall.

The on-again, off-again status of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal nutrition-assistance program known as SNAP — first halted, then briefly restored, then scaled back again — left more than three-quarters of Oregon families, including one in five households in Lane County, anxious and confused.

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Many rely on SNAP benefits to keep food on the table, and the shifting messages from Washington made it nearly impossible to plan ahead. During late October and early November, 97 new families came to get food boxes from Creswell’s Community Food. The Oakridge Food Pantry saw a 30 percent increase during that same time. Mapleton Food Share broke its all-time record of number of clients served.

Oregon moved quickly to reinstate full benefits for November, but the damage was already done. People had already rationed groceries, skipped meals, and worried about how long help would last. For those living close to the edge, even a few days of doubt can deepen the sense that stability is always temporary.

Some days, I wake up, and I don’t know where the next meal is coming from. Emmett, visitor to The Dining Room

At the Dining Room, Emmett*, stands in line, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes on the pavement. That tipping point has long defined his life.

Now a few years shy of Social Security, he suffered a traumatic brain injury at 18, which began a rollercoaster of medical and psychological problems, sporadic employment, intermittent houselessness, and persistent food insecurity. 

“Some days, I wake up, and I don’t know where the next meal is coming from,” he says quietly. 

Then he catches himself. “Well, from here, of course,” he says. And he smiles. 

Who is hungry?

A 2016 state analysis by the Oregon Public Health Division found that roughly 15 percent of Lane County residents and 22 percent of children were food insecure. This ranked the county, at that time, as the second-most food-insecure county in the state.

The fact that the county with the No. 1 ranking, tiny Wheeler County, is home to only about 1,500 residents shows how extreme rates can occur in very small populations — and make such rankings confusing.

Lane’s most recent health assessment report, capturing 2024-25 data, repeats the earlier findings, with 15 percent of residents experiencing food insecurity.

Among children, about one in five said they didn’t have enough to eat at least once a week.

Poverty mirrors these patterns. The latest federal data show 15.3 percent of Lane County residents live below the poverty line — about one in six people.

But the burden isn’t evenly distributed.

In Oakridge, nearly three in 10 residents live in poverty. In Eugene and Springfield, it’s closer to one in six, and in Cottage Grove, about one in seven. Together, these numbers sketch a county where food and economic insecurity run deep, and where the struggle is felt most sharply in certain communities.

But federal poverty measures tell only part of the story. 

‘For now, all I ask is the justice of eating’

A newer measurement known as ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) captures households where people are employed but still cannot afford basic necessities including housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology. 

United Way reports nearly half of all households in Lane County are ALICE households, that is, they struggle to cover basic living expenses. For many, this means making trade-offs with food: Bills that must be paid are paid, and food is the budget that suffers.

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That is why so many line up outside the Dining Room and elsewhere at food pantries and meal sites across the county.

Sean and Sasha understand this struggle. They both work service industry jobs, but their double paychecks do not stretch through the month to keep their four children eating healthy meals. 

They are the definition of an ALICE household. 

Today Sean, on his quick lunch break, waits in line to pick up to-go meal sacks for the family. Occasionally, the whole family comes inside, and the energy the kids bring into the space is contagious. They are lively. They laugh. They eat with gusto. 

The Dining Room is an intimate space with room for only 45 diners at a time, which is why those waiting in line outside are given numbers, and entry is skillfully controlled. No one waits for long, and no one is turned away.

Inside, the meals — hearty and nutritionally balanced — are served by an aproned, volunteer waitstaff. One day it might be roast chicken and mashed potatoes; another day fish and rice. There are casseroles and chili and stew. There is always a vegetable or two.

The space is welcoming: warm in winter, cool in summer, dry when the weather outside is not. Picture windows overlook tree-lined Eighth Avenue. Four bold, colorful murals — some painted by the diners themselves — decorate the walls.

A quote from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda decorates one wall: “… for now all I ask is the justice of eating.”

Outside, hungry people wait. They are unemployed, underemployed, maybe living under bridges or in cars or in temporary shelters, maybe a paycheck away from losing housing. 

Some of those in line waiting for open tables are in wheelchairs, like Bea*, who is missing a leg and whose diabetes is not under control. Others make their way slowly and unsteadily behind walkers.

Age and disability are on full display.

But many have wounds that do not show: the young woman in line dressed in too many layers, gesturing to no one; Jo*, a former chef at a high-end restaurant, whose drug habit became an addiction that cost her everything. She now lives in a tent in someone’s backyard.

On most days, although their lives may be filled with personal drama, there is surprisingly little drama in this line. These folks know each other. It is a camaraderie born of poverty.

Why are people hungry?

Individual stories and circumstances may differ — but common factors underlie food insecurity — and the poverty or marginal existence that underlie that. Why is it that so many people in Lane County cannot adequately and consistently feed themselves and their families? Why does the county struggle with poverty despite its economic and educational resources?

The reasons may seem obvious. Yet for those who don’t live them, they remain largely invisible: scarce affordable housing, limited employment, low wages, and the increasing cost of almost everything else.

These problems are deep-rooted, entangled and enduring. They resist quick fixes. 

In rural parts of the county, fixes are harder still. Grocery stores may be many miles away, public transportation rare or nonexistent, and prices higher. Hunger in these areas is less visible than in the city — but no less real.

Housing is the biggest issue, the biggest challenge, the biggest burden. A two-bedroom apartment averages about $1,673 in Eugene, roughly 21 percent above the national rate. Across the river in Springfield, the average is only slightly lower, and in Cottage Grove, rents hover between $1,200 and $1,500. Even in outlying towns once considered affordable — Oakridge or Florence — two-bedroom units often list for $900 to $1,400 when they can be found at all.

Tracking an exact number is nearly impossible: Different rental sites report wildly different figures, some skewed by scant inventory, others by including single-family homes or short-term rentals. But the trend line is unmistakable: steady, unrelenting increases across the county.

Eugenean Paula Rini has been in the real estate business for 39 years. She has seen and weathered recessions, booms and busts, wildly fluctuating interest rates, hot markets, sluggish markets, and everything in between.

“It is cruel math,” she says about today’s housing situation. “The reality is housing and rental prices go up, and wages don’t. The average working person, the average household — they could have made it. Now they can’t.”

It is cruel math … housing and rental prices go up, and wages don’t. Paula Rini, in real estate business

Outside the Oakridge Food Pantry, Michelle waits in line to get her food box. She and her husband both work full-time. He leaves for work at 5:30 a.m. Her shift at a fast-food restaurant begins at 2 p.m. They qualify for SNAP benefits, but with their large family — which includes four of their own children and two others they have taken in — with increased housing and utility costs, they are another ALICE household, living paycheck to paycheck. Keeping everyone fed, and keeping the family together is a struggle.

The food pantry fills the gaps. But some months, the gaps are wider than others. 

In Mapleton, Alicia, a recent widow in her late 60s, on disability, lives in an apartment she can afford only because she gets help with her food budget. Mapleton Food Share is an integral part of her life.

The takeaway is clear. For those on Social Security or disability, for those earning minimum wage, or piecing together part-time jobs, or underemployed in the service and caregiving sectors, housing anywhere in Lane County — urban or rural — is often beyond reach. 

The federal standard of affordability is that rent and utilities should cost no more than 30 percent of income, a threshold that’s now a fantasy for many residents. According to the 2024-25 Lane County Community Health Assessment report, 56 percent of renters in the county are cost-burdened, meaning they are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing and utilities.

Despite recent construction of some new affordable rental units in Eugene, low-income housing is scarce, and the demand is high. Waiting lists for programs like the Housing Choice Voucher (the federal rental assistance program known as “Section 8”) can stretch to two or three years. These lists routinely close to new applicants.

The only way to keep a roof overhead is to skimp on everything else — on food, on medical care, on the many other costs that make a life livable. That’s how people end up at food pantries: not because they can’t budget, but because the math no longer works.

The math also doesn’t work because of job opportunities and wages. 

Lane County’s unemployment rate has slowly and steadily risen to 5%. But employment does not automatically equal economic stability. Many who work in entry-level, part-time, service, or seasonal jobs make wages that do not cover the cost of living.

The county’s health assessment report for this year states: “A person in Lane County with no children needs 1.5 minimum-wage, full-time jobs to meet basic living expenses.” Families with children face child-care costs that have increased faster than inflation or, in some rural parts of the county, there are no options for child care at all.  

The county’s workforce includes a substantial number of “working poor” residents, like Sean and Sasha, like Michelle and her husband, who earn above the federal poverty line yet still cannot reliably meet their basic needs.

The challenges to the working poor also include higher utility bills. 

Both Eugene Water & Electric Board and Lane Electric Coop implemented rate increases this year. Blachly Lane Coop is evaluating an increase. Even a single-digit rate hike can tip a family from just managing into crisis. One larger winter bill can mean a skipped meal or an unfilled prescription.

These numbers, percentages and statistics can be overwhelming and confusing. Many agencies — federal, state, county and local, government and nonprofit — gather data based on different criteria across different time periods.

But the point isn’t precision; it’s scale, connection, cause. What is important is seeing how these challenges interlock — and how easy it is to misunderstand them. 

Those who need help, those who line up at food pantries or free meal sites or farm stands, those who get meals delivered to them, those who receive SNAP benefits, can be seen as lazy or irresponsible, as parasitic. They are “taking advantage.” If they only made better choices, they would not be in this situation.

Yet for nearly everyone who is food insecure, the story is almost the opposite. Hunger, it turns out, is rarely about moral failure — and almost never about choice.

The working hungry

“Did I choose this?” Maria* asks. She is standing on the porch of the Mapleton Food Share, waiting in line with her friend.

Maria moved to Oregon several years ago to escape the high cost of living in California. 

“I can barely afford it here,” she says. Her friend nods. “I work full time. I live simply. But here I am waiting for food.”

Another supposed “failure,” often laid at the feet of the poor, is being overweight, as if excess weight, like hunger, were a matter of personal weakness rather than limited choices. In truth, both hunger and obesity can share the same cause: poverty.

From the Centers for Disease Control to the World Health Organization to the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, researchers have long noted a paradox at the heart of American hunger: The nation’s poorest are also among the most likely to contend with obesity.

Households that struggle to put enough on the table can also struggle with the effects of diets that consist of cheap, calorie-dense foods.

When money is tight, every meal becomes a calculation: What will fill the stomach without emptying the wallet? A $5 fast-food combo can provide many hundreds of (high-fat, high-salt, low-nutrition) calories — and a sense of immediate satiety. Spending the same $5 on fresh produce buys a handful of vegetables — healthy, but far less filling.

And if there is no access to cooking facilities, this “choice” is just not possible. 

For ALICE households, those working multiple jobs or juggling employment and child care, there is often little energy for meal planning or cooking, and the convenience of fast food is compelling and sometimes just necessary.

For those living high-stress lives, the paycheck-to-paycheck existence of the working poor, there is the comfort of so-called comfort food, these inexpensive, high-calorie, empty-nutrient meals.

But persistent poverty can also have the opposite effect.

Tim*, waiting in line outside the Dining Room, is on the far side of gaunt. His clothes hang on him as if there is no body underneath. He has lived without a permanent home for a decade and a half. He doesn’t want to talk about that. He wants to eat. Lynn*, the septuagenarian, and Jo*, the recovering addict, are both rail-thin. Obesity comes with a long list of health problems. So too does being severely underweight.

I work full time. I live simply. But here I am waiting for food. Maria, in line at a food pantry

The tangle of poverty, food insecurity and poor health. The intertwined challenges of affordable housing, escalating costs and lack of family-wage jobs. These problems seem insurmountable.

The resulting statistics, according to the most recent count from the United States Department of Agriculture, show the cost to the well-being of all of us: 13.5% of the nation’s population is food insecure. That’s about 18 million households.

But here’s the surprise: In the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. nearly solved hunger, reducing it to 3% of the population. 

Solving hunger, again

How did we do that? And what happened?

We owe that temporary victory to historical events that forced new attitudes toward hunger. We owe that victory not only to the social welfare programs of President Franklin Roosevelt but also to bipartisan efforts in the decades that followed.

This history lesson is instructive.

In the depths of the Great Depression, unemployment reached 25%, incomes fell by nearly half, and farms were devastated by drought. Poverty and hunger were widespread, visible and undeniable. Long breadlines showed that charity alone could not address the scale of need.

More than that, the economic realities of those years made clear that anyone — no matter how hard-working — could find themselves hungry. Hunger was not the result of personal laziness. Hunger was not private misfortune. This attitude fueled the programs of the New Deal. Postwar prosperity helped ease conditions. But hunger persisted, often out of sight.

That began to change when CBS aired Edward R. Murrow’s “Harvest of Shame” on Thanksgiving Day 1960, highlighting the hardships faced by migrant workers, those who labored to produce food but could not afford to feed their own families.

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Eight years later came the Charles Kuralt-narrated documentary, “Hunger in America,” which exposed widespread hunger and malnutrition in areas like rural Virginia, the American South, and Native American reservations. Its impact was immediate, leading to the creation of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, a major catalyst for bipartisan anti-hunger legislation. The documentary also highlighted what the next generation of medical research substantiated: that malnutrition could and did exist alongside obesity, the result of diets heavy in cheap starches.

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President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and the expansion of food stamps, school meals, and other safety nets marked a turning point.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon pledged to “end hunger in America,” convening a White House conference to chart a path. The result was nearly a decade of bipartisan investment that worked.

But in the 1980s, cuts under President Ronald Reagan weakened the safety net, and later “welfare reform” under President Bill Clinton emphasized policing fraud over feeding families.

By the early 2000s, hunger was rising again. Government-backed emergency measures during the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily eased the situation.

But now, government defunding, especially the cuts to SNAP benefits, has exacerbated it. 

This lesson in history shows that, with public awareness of who is hungry and why, and with the concerted, bipartisan efforts of a government that cares, hunger is not an unsolvable problem.

Given today’s political climate, the solutions that worked so well in the past are not possible. But here in Lane County there are serious, ongoing efforts to mitigate hunger in our midst. A powerful combination of county and local agencies, citizen committees, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, farmers, grocers, and thousands of volunteers are working to fill the gaps.

Inside Food for Lane County’s Dining Room on a cold, damp Monday in mid-November, two weeks after undergoing a facelift, the volunteer crew is at work: rolling silverware into cloth napkins, filling salt and pepper shakers, starting the coffee machine, setting out donated desserts on serving trays.

They arrive early to ensure that the Dining Room opens on time, right at noon.

In the first wave, three dozen people make their way inside the freshly painted room. The tables are “new” — rescued from a diner that closed down.

There is an oval table in the corner reserved for families. A single father and his 4-year-old son, regulars at the Dining Room, are seated there. The boy gets a special children’s tray with the food placed in different sections. Today’s meal is fish fillets, brown rice and asparagus. The vegetarian option is a hearty lentil stew. Father and son clean their respective plates. They choose cake for dessert.

Lynn* sits at the counter, as usual, eating with particular pleasure “and so much gratitude.” At home, carefully doling out her SNAP benefits — and wondering back in early October whether those benefits would continue — she had very little meat in her diet. Peanut butter with an occasional tin of tuna fish, she says. She looks at the full plate in front of her and smiles.

Inside, the rising hum of conversation mixes with the sounds of the guitar and fiddle from volunteer musicians at the front of the room.

It’s good to have a plate of warm food delivered to your table.

It’s good to feel that people care.

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