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A article from the Portland Press Herald

ALFRED — The first time Nancy Pike went to a food pantry, she could hardly believe she was there.

After working for decades and raising nine children without government assistance, there she was, asking for help doing the most basic of tasks: feeding herself and her husband.

It’s a memory that is sharp and painful, even two years later.

“I get emotional about that,” she says, turning her face down and covering her mouth with her hand as she recalls the first time she asked for food. Tears slip down her face.

Hunger

Jim and Nancy Pike have dinner at home. The meal included chicken sandwiches and chicken soup. The chicken came from the monthly Good Shepherd Food-Bank Senior Food Mobile in Alfred.

“I was always on the other side when I worked. Now I have to beg.”

Faced with health problems that prevent them from working, Nancy Pike, 77, and Jim Pike, 65, struggle to get by on their monthly Social Security check. By the time they pay their bills, they often find themselves with little or no money left for groceries.

Their trips to the food pantry are a closely guarded secret they keep even from their nine children and 25 grandchildren.

“They think I’m strong and I think that’s a weakness,” Nancy Pike says.

The Pikes, who live in a tidy but old trailer in Alfred, have no choice but to turn to an emergency food system that is increasingly stressed as a growing number of seniors in Maine and across the country need help putting food on the table.

In Maine, the number of seniors on food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reached 29,571 in October – a 32 percent increase since 2010. Seniors now account for 12 percent of food stamp recipients, a figure which will climb as the population in Maine – which already has the nation’s oldest median age of 37.5 – continues to rise.

Experts in Maine believe there are at least 24,000 Maine seniors, or about 8 percent of the senior population, who don’t have enough food to maintain a healthy diet, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines as “food insecurity.” However, the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger, a Virginia nonprofit organization, puts the percentage of hungry Maine seniors higher, at more than 14 percent, when seniors who are “marginally food insecure” are included.

But these figures vastly understate the true degree of hunger among the elderly, according to those who work on the issue. This is true, the experts say, because the majority of seniors don’t want to ask for public assistance, and many of those who are willing to seek help don’t know where to look or whether they even qualify for programs like food stamps or food pantries.

In addition, statistics on hunger among the elderly are sketchy, inconsistent and incomplete, in part because hunger prevention programs have historically focused on children and families, which has driven funding and research toward those groups rather than older Americans. Complicating matters, public agencies and private groups that work on hunger don’t always use the same definitions. The first national report on senior hunger wasn’t published until 2008, and there have been no comprehensive state-level studies of hunger among elders.

An estimated 8.8 million seniors in the United States now face the threat of hunger, an 88 percent increase since 2001, according to the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger.

“In 2001, we found one in nine seniors faced the threat of hunger. That’s now one in six,” said Enid Borden, founder and president of the nonprofit National Foundation to End Senior Hunger. “I call that the decade of shame. We should be ashamed that in those 10 years we’ve seen an 88 percent increase in the number of seniors affected by hunger. It’s a national problem with local and state implications.”

More here

http://specialprojec.....ng-hungry/

yeah, they said they were to proud to ask their nine kids

car payment 260 a month

electric is high here, I'm assuming they have forced hot air, I wouldn't be surprised if their electric is 200-225 a month for that little trailer

prescriptions are 10 each at 1.75 or more, so that's at least 35, I would assume this is higher

oil is 4 bucks a gallon, their probably going through 75 gallons a month or more in that trailer, so at least 300 for that

propane runs 2.3 a gallon, so probably another 20 a month for that

taxes 80 a month

a lot of unknows, health insurance? Home insurance? Car insurance? How much is excise tax for them? We don't pay a flat vehicle registration here in Maine, it's based off type, year and mileage of your vehicle. Our FJ was 525 the first year for excise tax, it's now 7 years old with 89000 miles and excise runs about 235 a year now.

It adds up quick here in Maine