Middle class, hungry in south OC? LaVal Brewer offers two words: dignity, respect

To understand the new economic rules that are transforming LaVal Brewer’s world – he’s chief executive at South County Outreach, an Irvine-based nonprofit that offers free food and housing assistance to people living south of the 55 – check out some recent census data.

For example, the census reported this month that the median household income in Irvine is $123,003 a year, nearly a third higher than the California median of $91,551. The census also noted that the city’s poverty rate is 11.2%, comfortably under the statewide rate of 12.2%.

And Irvine might be the poorest of the communities served by Brewer’s agency.

In Lake Forest, the median income is $128,033 and the poverty rate is 8.5%. In Laguna Hills the numbers are $122,902 and 8.3%; in Laguna Niguel, they’re $135,822 and 7.4%; in Mission Viejo, they’re $126,469 and 9.3%. San Juan Capistrano, Coto de Caza, San Clemente, Dana Point – all are south Orange County communities with people who might seek help from Brewer’s agency, and all are places where incomes are high and poverty is low. The numbers point to comfort, not struggle. By every traditional measure, hunger and homelessness in south Orange County should be rare.

But Brewer – and thousands of families helped by South County Outreach – know better.

In 2023, with the COVID-19 emergency waning and the economy settling into a new version of normal, Brewer’s agency saw its client base double. About 1,300 families a month have signed up to get free, healthy nutrition – fresh veggies and fruits, some proteins, eggs, milk, bread – from the grocery-style pantry South County Outreach runs in a business park near the 5 freeway. A few hundred also seek assistance with their monthly rent or mortgage, and a few dozen ask South County Outreach for help in finding shelter so that they and their kids can stop sleeping in cars or parks or greenbelts.

The surge of need at South County Outreach is just an extreme version of what played out this year at nonprofits countywide.

The end of the pandemic meant the end of pandemic-related money. Rent assistance, child tax credits, food subsidies; lots of federal and state programs aimed at helping people stay solvent during the COVID-era went away in 2023. The result was that even as the economy returned to normal, and in some ways thrived, there was a spike in hunger and food insecurity, even among people who never felt that before.

Second Harvest Food Bank, the nonprofit that serves as a key distributor for South County Outreach and several hundred other local food pantries, said recently it is on pace to serve an all-time record of more than 400,000 people per month in 2023. That’s up from last year’s record and well over pre-pandemic numbers that, at the time, were considered dire.

“Everybody talks about getting back to 2019,” Brewer said. “But from the numbers I’ve seen 2019 wasn’t so great.”

Yet if hunger has been a huge issue in 2023, Brewer, 57, of Mission Viejo, suggests self-image, particularly for people who live in communities of comfort, has been a close second.

The vast majority of the people getting help from South County Outreach work full-time. Most have a place to live. Most view themselves as middle class. And many, Brewer said, are grappling with the very idea that they might need help.

“The pandemic sort of shook up everybody’s psyche,” Brewer said. “Before the pandemic, if you’re living paycheck to paycheck but making $100,000 a year, and you have a credit card and you live in a nice house, you think you’re rich. Or at least you think you’re doing OK.

“But the reality was, and is, you’re not,” he added. “The reality is you might need help.”

That reality can be bewildering.

“When the pandemic hit, a lot of (middle class) people suddenly needed help and didn’t feel shame or vulnerability about getting it. Then, when the pandemic money went away, their feelings – and their need – didn’t go away,” Brewer said. “But now they’re thinking, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I’m busting my ass, I’m working really hard, but we’re qualifying for benefits. That sucks.’”

To be clear, most of the people seeking free food and other help from South County Outreach don’t make $100,000 a year. Federal rules suggest the incomes for families who qualify for assistance top out at around $85,000 a year in south Orange County.

But while Brewer’s agency uses such federal data to help people, it doesn’t use it to turn people away.

“Look, if you come in and tell us you make $150,000 or something, no, we’re probably not going to let you in. But if you’re at that $100,000 threshold, and you’re just a little over the (area median income), we’re not saying no,” Brewer said.

“The ideas of who is middle class, or comfortable, are changing.”

Normal experience

Food deliveries sometimes devolved into chaos. Volunteer workers worked hard – sometimes too hard – but not always with a lot of direction. And the food transportation trucks, all three of them, were near death.

Those were some of the conditions Brewer saw when he landed the job as president and CEO of South County Outreach during the height of the pandemic: June 2020.

Though Brewer was coming to the role directly from a stint at OneOC, a volunteer organization in Orange County, he’d spent most of his career working his way from a program director into a series of executive roles at the YMCA.

Working at the Y, he said, prepped him in several skills – logistics, management, grant-writing – essential for his new position.

It also gave him a skill that didn’t necessarily match a food-oriented nonprofit – asking for money.

While food nonprofits traditionally seek donations of food, Brewer was – and is – more comfortable giving donors a compelling reason to write a check. And to create the agency he envisioned – essentially an easy-to-shop, clean, well-stocked grocery store, minus the cash registers – Brewer needed those checks.

To get them, he launched an outreach to donors that he called the “Eggs, Milk and Butter” campaign.

The words weren’t random. They emphasized the basic, no-frills nature of what South County Outreach provides. They also happen to be three foods — all perishables — that aren’t typically donated but are, instead, purchased.

The message to donors was simple: They could help the community by letting South County Outreach procure, prep and give away as much food as necessary in a way that matches the organization’s two-word mission statement – dignity and respect.

“It worked,” Brewer said, smiling.

It also transformed South County Outreach.

First, Brewer turned volunteers into paid employees. The agency now has six people working regular schedules to run the food pantry, organize deliveries and help people stay in, or get, housing.

Second, he rented storage space away from the pantry. That space now serves as a delivery site and food prep area.

“Before, you’d sometimes have three different deliveries coming to the pantry at a time when shoppers were there. People would look at what was on the crates and want that, even though we couldn’t yet give it out. It was confusing.”

Finally, Brewer got new trucks.

“One of the old ones didn’t have a working gas gauge. Another was just…. ugly,” he said, laughing. “They all needed to go.”

But the new changes aren’t about making people feel good. They’re about efficiency and helping more people.

“I love nonprofits. But nonprofits that act like they’re always poor, that are just scraping by, are missing out a little,” Brewer said. “If you don’t stop and ask what can be most efficient, then you’re not really doing your job as well as you can do it.

“When we’re slow, or not as efficient as we can be, it means someone is going without. We don’t want that.”

For Brewer, efficiency also meant transforming the food pantry into a place where people can be totally comfortable picking up the nutrition that, in Brewer’s view, will help “get them out of this cycle.”

“We took the eggs, milk and butter campaign and said we’re going to democratize the grocery business for lower-income families,” Brewer said.

“We’re going to make it so no one feels ‘less than.’”

Mixed bag

South County Outreach plans to open a new pantry in Laguna Niguel soon. Eventually, Brewer says, the agency might run as many as five pantries in south Orange County, probably with at least one more off-site delivery center.

He’s not entirely stoked about that. Right now, South County Outreach is picking up about 100 new families a month, but far fewer are leaving or, as Brewer puts it, “getting out of line.”

Trend-wise that’s not good. It means that, for the moment, there’s more hunger than solutions. It also can mean some complacency, in Brewer’s view, as people can get comfortable picking up hassle-free, free food, while others need it more. It’s part of why South County Outreach is teaching financial literacy, tax preparation and urging clients to apply for discounts on everything from their electric bills to their internet fees.

“Obviously, the goal is to help people so they don’t need us,” Brewer said. “That’s part of the job, too.”

But, for now, the bigger job is feeding people in a community where the need isn’t always obvious. A growing economy, he said, could help that.

But he also noted that it took several years for lower-income people to fully recover from the recession of 2008, and he worries a similar pattern might play out for a few years after the pandemic – keeping his agency in an unwelcome growth mode.

“My hope, for next year, is that all the talk about the soft (economic) landing turns out to be true,” Brewer said.

“But I also hope that people understand that what’s a soft landing for many people can be hard for people at the bottom,” he added.

Then he spanked his hands together.

“Somebody could get crushed.”

Source: Orange County Register