After nearly 30 years as a photofinisher, Viola Rheinhardt never expected to need food stamps. Rheinhardt, who is making mortgage payments on a town home in Rosemount, saw her career come to a full stop in 2007 when her employer shut down its Edina plant. Her fallback, a minimum-wage job in retail, disappeared after two years when her second employer downsized.

At 66, Rheinhardt said job opportunities are slim. She’s applying to public assistance to survive and bringing home groceries from church food shelves. It’s the last thing she ever expected for herself, but it’s hardly uncommon for hundreds of middle-class workers across Dakota County.

County officials say they have mapped the “new face of hunger in Dakota County” and have found that it often looks a lot like Rheinhardt. Middle-class residents who once might have made donations to their church or local food pantry are now lining up at those places, hoping to be fed. The national economic slowdown has many suburban homeowners wondering where their next meal is coming from.

On Wednesday, a network of nonprofit organizations held a forum at the county service center in Apple Valley to dissect the growing demand for one of the most basic necessities.

“You can’t live on Social Security,” Rheinhardt said. “You can’t even buy food.”

Jane Vanderpoel, an analyst with the Dakota County Office of Planning and Analysis, said the number of people receiving food support — now known as SNAP, but formerly
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referred to as the federal food stamp program — rose to 5,845 last year, nearly tripling over nine years.

Some 20 percent of the county’s school kids were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches last year, a 20 percent increase over 2008. More than 13,700 families were enrolled in the federal Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, a food- and medical-assistance program that has nearly doubled in size in Dakota County in 10 years.

Meanwhile, the county’s unemployment rate reached 7.6 percent in March, still significantly below the state and national levels but uncharacteristically high for an area that has prided itself on being home to a wide range of industries. As a gateway to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the Mall of America and both Minneapolis and St. Paul, the county has served as something of an employment incubator for Minnesota.

POVERTY’S NEW FACES

Poverty isn’t new in Dakota County, but it is a startling experience for thousands of unemployed workers experiencing it for the first time.

Just like government assistance programs, churches, food shelves and nonprofit agencies are fielding more requests, often from people unaccustomed to asking for anything. Mary Kocak, food shelf director with Hastings Family Service, said more than 1,600 people — one in 19 Hastings residents — used the agency’s food shelf last year. Nearly half were children.

“They’re behind in mortgage and rent. They’re using credit cards to buy time,” Kocak said. “People that once were donors are now requesting help.”

Kocak said first-time visitors often bring with them a lot of shame and anxiety. One man drove himself to the food shelf twice before he was able to swallow his pride and go in. “He said his dad never raised him to (depend on) a food shelf,” she said.

Wendy Ogren, an outreach manager with Second Harvest Heartland, a Maplewood-based food bank, said she asked a woman whose unemployment benefits were running out whether she’d turned to her local food shelf. “She teared up and said, ‘I can’t do it yet,’ “ Ogren said.

For many, entering the growing ranks of the poor is such a new experience that they don’t know where to begin seeking assistance.

“I called Social Security. I asked them if they could help, and they couldn’t,” Rheinhardt recalled. “I asked if they could give me the phone number of someone who could help, and they couldn’t. I hung up the phone, and I cried.”

Rheinhardt recently applied for food stamps and is now signed up with Experience Works, an agency that helps place seniors in jobs. She said she’s keeping her head up, though she’s still on the verge of losing her home, as some of her former co-workers have.

“When I first came out here, most of our clients were 65 or older,” said Shirley Ackerman, an Experience Works coordinator. “Now, I’m seeing a lot more younger people.”

Danielle Baas Molliver, social justice and charity director with St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Eagan, said she’s heard some people question why churches don’t step in more to help the poor.

She said St. John Neumann does what it can with its emergency food shelf and partners with two other churches to form the Eagan Resource Center, which maintains a food shelf at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Eagan.

But among parishioners alone, the need for food help, gas cards and other forms of assistance has grown dramatically, Molliver said. She used to field requests from 1 percent to 2 percent of the church population. It’s now more like 10 percent to 15 percent.

“They wait until everyone else in the building and on staff has left to contact me,” Molliver said. “What was social outreach has now become sustaining our parishioners. The first thing that comes out of their mouths is, ‘I used to give.’ They never had to receive before.”

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.

1. Food shelf visits in 2009 increased 24 percent over the previous year — the largest recorded increase in 28 years.

1. More than 50 percent of adult food-shelf visitors are employed.

1. From 2000 to 2009, food-shelf usage almost tripled — from more than 1 million visits a year to almost 3 million.

1. More than 18 percent of households with children in the metro area struggled to purchase food in 2009.

Sources: Minnesota Food Share, Hunger Solutions Minnesota, Wilder Research

FOOD SHELVES IN DAKOTA COUNTY

360 Communities (formerly Community Action Council): 952-985-5300

Eagan Resource Center: 651-686-0787

Hastings Family Service: 651-437-7134

Salvation Army, Rosemount: 651-322-3510