DC Central Kitchen Deserves the Contract!
by becky sambol

Events of the past week

Last week when the Washington Post reported that food delivery to a number of city homeless shelters had been interrupted due to the city’s failure to deliver a contract to the DC Central Kitchen (DCCK), the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) weekly action group was able to mobilize and act pretty quickly. We had already been preparing and distributing food and other supplies on a weekly basis since mid-January, so we wondered not if we could do something, but how large scale an effort we could manage.

A conversation with staff at the Franklin Shelter that afternoon confirmed that there would be a meal delivered that evening, but beyond that they knew of no future arrangements for meal service to the shelter’s 240-275 residents. At the DAWN meeting that evening, we passed a level three endorsement to raise funds to purchase food and supplies for the Franklin Shelter. On Wednesday, we contacted the shelter and committed to begin providing meals on Thursday and every Thursday thereafter until the crisis was resolved. As it turned out, by Friday, the response to our outreach was so generous that we raised enough to cover our costs for at least two weeks of meal delivery. We were so heartened by the response and are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed.

Thursday evening we arrived at the Franklin Shelter, half an hour late due to rush hour traffic and slightly frazzled because we had tried so hard to be on time. Two of us had spent the day cooking and preparing 250 homemade bean, rice, and potato burritos. I know that sounds starchy but they were really delicious and fairly nutritionally balanced when combined with the fresh and colorful chopped salad we prepared to go with them. A third person helped with last minute shopping, wrapping burritos, and delivering the food to the shelter. Two other people delivered 70 jugs of juice. I have to say that our small group felt really empowered by what we had been able to accomplish, and relatively quickly at that.

When we arrived at the shelter, we were thanked and told by shelter staff that there was no need for us to deliver any more food, as the shelter had a new contract with Nutrition Inc. Friday afternoon one of us spoke by phone with Thomas Gaskins, president of Nutrition Inc. Mr. Gaskins maintained that Nutrition Inc. was only helping out at a few shelters for a few days, but that his company was not pursuing a food service contract for the city’s homeless shelters.

About DC Central Kitchen

Meanwhile, DCCK has proven its commitment to community service to DC residents and deserves to be awarded that food service contract. Seventeen years ago, when the city was broke and there was no virtually no food delivery system in place for homeless DC residents. Robert Egger bought a refrigerated truck with his first grant and began serving meals.

DCCK now provides 4000 daily meals 365 days a year to 100 agencies including transitional homes, substance abuse treatment centers, adult education and job training agencies, community and youth centers, children’s after school programs, and senior citizen programs as well as emergency shelters.

The city’s primary contribution has been free rent and utilities for DCCK, which represents a mere fraction of operating costs. For the past two years, DCCK has been trying to get the city to recognize the severity of the situation. The city’s homeless population is not only growing at a rapid rate, it is also aging. Further, besides the growing senior section, the city’s homeless population counts more and more children among its ranks. According to DC Hunger Solutions, approximately 175,000 residents depend on emergency food from food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens and one out of three children in the district “lives on the edge of hunger” (www.dchunger.org ).

DCCK has struggled to absorb the rising costs of providing nutritionally appropriate balanced meals to DC’s diverse and growing homeless population. After 17 years, the city finally made a temporary financial commitment to DCCK. The $50,000 a month the city granted to DCCK over a four month period ending April 30 represented about .05 percent of the money spent by DCCK over the last 17 years. On Tuesday, May 1, DCCK sent a letter to the city shelters notifying them that it would be forced to suspend meal service until the city government made a decision to improve the system and invest in a higher level of nutrition for residents.

DCCK does a lot more than serve food. Its food delivery enables the area agencies it serves to refocus their limited resources on their clients’ other needs. DCCK also helps people get into mental health and substance abuse programs and conducts four 12 week culinary training programs every year. Since 1990, the DCCK culinary training program has graduated 600 former residents of shelters, halfway houses, and transitional programs. DCCK has 50 full time employees, 20 of whom are training program graduates. All employees receive full benefits and living wages.

On Friday I talked to Mike Curtin, chief operating officer for DCCK. He maintains that DCCK will be able to do even more if they get the food service contract for the city shelters. He is confident that “exponential benefits will be gained by the city if we get the contract.” He explained that they are not serving fewer meals since they stopped delivering food to Blair, 801 E, Franklin, Emery, and La Casa, but have redirected the food to other destinations where it is also needed.

Both Mike and Robert have been fasting since Tuesday when they discontinued food service to those five shelters, out of respect for the men and women in those shelters. They will continue their fast until the city makes a commitment to move forward to award a contract for food service.

Privatization: a weapon in a weaponless war

I really hope that the Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the agency entrusted with awarding contracts for services to the homeless, is not considering a food service contract to any private company. The privatization of public social services is a significant contributing cause of poverty and the concomitant increase in the concentration of wealth distribution. When fat contracts are handed off by governments to the private sector, there is much fancy talk about improved efficiency and cost effectiveness, but in reality access to social services is reduced and even eliminated. Those who can afford it least suffer loss of employment and income.

Last week at our DAWN meeting, someone commented that he didn’t know DAWN had gotten into the food business. I told him we were not in any business and asked him, “Don’t you understand that the war on the poor is a real war and we are anti-war activists?” He responded, “I didn’t think you were involved with that kind of war.”

Privatization is a cornerstone neoliberal strategy in nameless, weaponless wars that kill slowly and covertly, but kill nonetheless, in Washington DC and in East Los Angeles, in Mexico, in India, in Ghana, and in developing countries around the world. There are no troops to call home from these wars. In fact even if all the troops were brought home from Iraq today, a weaponless war there would continue under the auspices of the World Bank, the IMF, and the corporate interests they represent. It is absolutely vital that anti-war activists begin to get that.

What will happen next?

I admit that I am not feeling optimistic, given the city’s track record of pandering to corporate interests. Ironically, while the food service crisis was unfolding this past week, ground breaking began for the $600 million baseball stadium and plans were announced to tear down low income housing and terminate a federal contract that pays rent for 211 low income families. The city has already shut down both the Randall and Gale shelters. The long term goal is understood to be the cleansing of the downtown area for development. The homeless are being hounded into southeast where they will be out of sight, out of mind. Does any one actually believe that any We Are Inc. will go to bat to advocate for vulnerable DC residents, let alone for the homeless?

When it comes to privatization, the direction of money flow is one way: out of our communities.

Think about this: a private company that provides food for profit would have no interest in helping homeless people get jobs because there would be less people to feed and that would cut into profits. The cost to the city per shelter resident is $24,000. The cost per incarcerated individual is $42,000 per year.

Then think about this: meals prepared by DCCK rely heavily on donated ingredients as well as monetary grants and donations. According to a study by the Kellogg Business School at Northwestern University, for every dollar donated to DCCK, $2.86 is returned to the community in food alone. This figure does not account for the return to the community in training programs, much less the return of hope and restored dignity when people get second chances.

DAWN weekly action group: connecting the dots between the wars

One of the first decisions made by this year by the newly formed DAWN weekly action group was to begin weekly service to homeless DC residents. Every week, almost always on Saturdays, we have distributed packaged and home-cooked food, socks, toiletries, and other items when we have them, to 30-40 people in northwest DC. On foot with our shopping cart, we cover a slightly different route each week within an area between the Canadian Embassy and Franklin Square. Our original goal was to begin connecting the dots between global and local poverty and war, between the wars abroad and the local war on the poor here in DC. Going out week after week has surely brought the connections home to those of us who participate.

In addition, as we have continued our service over the weeks and months we have begun to get to know some of the people we meet on the streets, in the parks, and around Metro stations. Through our growing connections and relationships, we are discovering how people manage to survive and build community primarily through their own resourcefulness and creativity.

Sometimes when we run out of supplies it is while hands are still outstretched toward us. I need to tell you that I am haunted all week when that happens. We are learning directly from people about how their lives are impacted by the city’s criminal neglect.

The folks at DC Central Kitchen give a damn. Their decision to suspend food service was made out of desperation, and it has finally brought attention to a growing crisis. I can only hope that just this once, the city and its appointed decision making bodies will do the right thing and award the contract to DC Central Kitchen.