More Anchorage residents are relying on food assistance programs

By the time Liliana Fredricks pulled into the parking lot of the Lutheran Church of Hope in Northeast Anchorage at around 5:30 p.m., the line was already three lanes wide, snaking longer by the minute. Volunteers waved her Subaru into place between traffic cones, where rows of vehicles and their drivers idled, waiting for an hour and a half for their turn to pull up, pop their trunk, and receive a package of fresh groceries.

Last Tuesday, it was pre-made salad, raw potatoes, limes, apples, bananas, cucumbers and milk, plus sweet bread for dessert.

“They give me vegetables, which is really hard as a single mom to buy, because they’re very expensive,” said Fredricks, an Alaska Airlines lounge host who moved to Anchorage from Juneau a year and a half ago to escape even higher costs of living. “It’s really helpful. It saves 50% of my budget I’d spent on food.”

Fredricks, who visited the food pantry for the first time in 2023, isn’t alone: Anchorage residents of varying backgrounds — including auto mechanics and seasonal guides, retirees who drive Uber by night and real estate agents — say that food assistance programs have helped keep them afloat, especially over the last five years.

The cost of living in Alaska has increased steadily since the pandemic, when the economy came to a screeching halt, then lurched back to life with higher interest rates and pent-up demand, said Sam Tappen, an economist with the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. From February 2019 to February 2024, grocery costs rose by 19% for urban Alaskans, data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows. Grocery costs peaked in December 2022 and have been decreasing slightly ever since, but are still “nowhere near” pre-pandemic levels, said Tappen.

“There’s no expectation that they’ll go back to that level,” he said.

Alaskans are feeling it. Sam Brock, an auto mechanic who supports a family of eight, began coming to the mobile food pantry last year after the cost of groceries became unaffordable for his family’s needs. “After COVID, financially, things got really tight,” Brock said. “With a big family, it’s hard to make both ends meet. (The mobile food pantry) has helped a lot.”

In 2023, the Lutheran Church mobile pantry was distributing food to about 175 families a week, said Alan Budahl, the director of Lutheran Social Services, the nonprofit that runs the Tuesday mobile food pantry. This year, they’re serving about 235 families each week — with one day this past summer hitting a record high in Budahl’s 15 years with 271 families in a single day.

Increasingly long lines at Anchorage’s mobile food pantries haven’t affected only Budahl’s operation, but also the additional nine mobile food pantries the Food Bank of Alaska and its partner organizations run daily each week.

In Anchorage more generally, the number of households fed by mobile food pantries fluctuated between 2020 and 2022, according to data from the Food Bank of Alaska, the organization that supplies the city’s 10 mobile food pantries, plus an additional 10 brick-and-mortar pantries. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of households served spiked significantly — by more than 12,000 families — from 34,854 to 47,494 families served in a year.

Data for 2024 is incomplete, but with four months to go, the number of families to serve so far this year is on track to mirror last year’s trends. So far this year, Anchorage’s mobile food pantries have served 35,391 families, according to Melody Buhr, who manages the mobile food pantries at the Food Bank of Alaska.

Increased demand for mobile food services is exacerbated by an unrelated decrease in supply.

“We have record low food, and demand has been crazy,” said Budahl.

Anchorage’s 10 mobile food pantries supplies are made up entirely of “reclaimed” foods nearing their expiration dates from local grocery stores. Budahl speculated that grocers have gotten better at managing their inventory orders, which leaves them with less excess to donate.

Seniors are particularly hard-hit, Budahl said. Prior to COVID, Lutheran Social Services had 152 seniors regularly collecting commodity boxes, including food and clothing. Now, that list tops 600 seniors.

“So many people were at retirement age, or they retired early because of COVID, and our senior population is exploding,” he said.

Anchorage’s increased food aid demand is mirrored in numbers across the state, said the Food Bank of Alaska’s chief philanthropy officer, Daniel Bentle.

“The bottom line is that the rate of food insecurity in Alaska continues to rise, and is higher than it was during and immediately post-pandemic,” Bentle said.

Deb Wilson, a retired Anchorage resident who drives Uber at night to keep an income stream, has been coming to the Lutheran Church of Hope mobile food pantry for a decade or more, with her Pomeranians in her minivan’s passenger seat. Her youngest Pomeranian, 6-year-old Rocky, has grown up with the volunteers. They often ask to hold him.

Wilson goes to food pantries across the city throughout the week to collect food to deliver to about five families in Anchorage, plus another in Wasilla, who aren’t able to come themselves. She usually gives away most of the food, “unless it’s Dr Pepper.”

“I’m retired, so I am able to come to the food bank,” Wilson said. “When I bring them food — milk, bread, cheese — they love it, because they don’t have that extra money to go out shopping.”