Pricing pinch

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 30th day of November, 2021.

You’re listening to World Radio and we thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: the rising consumer price index.

That’s one economic measure for price inflation and you’ve heard a lot about rising prices over the past few months.

No doubt you’ve seen ample evidence of the problem in your own family budget.

REICHARD: But families aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. Ministries are also dealing with rising costs and rising need. WORLD correspondent Lauren Dunn reports.

DOHM: We hang about 4000 clothing items in here.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Paul Dohm is standing in a large metal building filled with rows and rows of clothing racks.

DOHM: And we organize it, you know – men's women's boys girls. Everything here is donated, we just make it available for people.

Dohm is the executive director of His Helping Hands. It’s been serving at-risk and low-income families in Wichita, Kan., since 2002. The ministry distributes food three times a month and provides gently-used clothes, furniture, and sometimes even cars for qualifying families.

Dohm says the ministry usually serves nearly 80,000 families every year. The number of people seeking help dipped during COVID. But now, the numbers are rising.

DOHM: It does seem like here in the past month, we've seen a greater need for food. And I think that people are, you know, their budgets are getting a little bit strained at this point that some of the stimulus stuff is over with. And so we've seen a probably a 50 percent increase in people coming in for food at this point.

And it’s getting more expensive to provide services.

Dohm estimates the ministry has experienced a 12 to 15 percent increase in costs due to inflation. That’s mostly in wages, fuel, and trash.

DOHM: As we manage the donations and get those ready for different distributions, some of these, we have to put in the trash, you know, and so, we do have a fairly high trash bill every year…We've seen rate increases of 50 to 70 percent in that area.

Nationwide, inflation is at a three-decade high. In the last year, fuel oil prices rose by nearly 60 percent, and gas prices by nearly 50 percent. Food prices have increased by about 5 percent overall.

Jerry Bowyer is chief economist of Vident Financial. He says inflation can have a greater effect on lower-income families. So, it’s not surprising that it also would increase the need for a nonprofit’s services.

BOWYER: The people that they serve are going to need them more because inflation does not hit the poor and the rich equally. Inflation hits the poor much harder, because poor people spend a far higher proportion of their income on food, shelter, clothing, than rich people.

As ministries deal with rising costs, they may not receive extra funds from donors to cover the shortfall. Bowyer says some donors may not realize inflation hits the ministries they support as well.

BOWYER: People tend to give kind of in a stable way, they give a certain amount of year to each group. And it's not always natural for them to fluctuate when the need goes up. And of course, you know, the ministries can tell them the need is greater. But there's also, there might be a little donor fatigue like oh, well, they always say the need is greater, when in fact it's almost, you know, whether it's true in the past it's almost certainly true now that the needs are going to be going up.

David Hodge is the chief financial officer at Union Rescue Mission. It’s a homeless shelter that’s operated in Wichita for 70 years.

HODGE: Our facility houses about 200 homeless men. About half are in long term programs that would lead to independent living over time. And about half are in the emergency shelters that just tend to stay overnight. And our desire’s to get all of them in into long term program so we can assist them with reentering society and living independently.

Hodge says the shelter usually serves more guests during winter months. But this year, the shelter hit capacity even during summer weeks.

Bri Smith is a communications strategist at Union Rescue Mission. She says the staff had to move chapel services to the cafeteria to make room for more beds.

SMITH: This is actually our chapel. But it is filled with beds right now because we are so like, full. So this would normally be where we would have church, but we can't because we have like an inflation of guests.

Union Rescue Mission is hoping to open a second building in the area next summer. That would double its capacity.

Like His Helping Hands, the mission is grappling with rising costs on just about everything.

Union Rescue Mission buys about half the food it needs to serve about 300 meals a day. The rest of the food is donated. Another big expense? Fuel.

HODGE: We're located about 10 miles from the core of downtown Wichita, most of the homelessness is occurring in the core. So we operate a busing service to and from downtown twice a day. And so fuel cost is important to us. And you'll notice energy costs are up about 50 percent in the past 12 months. A 50 percent increase in fuel equals a $60,000 increase to us.

Despite the rising costs, Hodge remains optimistic about the mission’s work. Staff still ask police and social service workers to bring homeless men to the shelter. The mission even sends out teams to invite men off the street in the evenings.

HODGE: I would tell you that I've seen more optimism within our men, the people coming in. Even though the number’s growing, their hearts are soft, and they love to hear about Christ. You're not homeless, if you've accepted Christ—you have a home. It’s just where do you live between now and eternity.

Back at His Helping Hands, Paul Dohm is also confident about his ministry’s future.

DOHM: We have a lot of faith in our big God. And he's never let us down. As he leads us into some of these areas, he has always been faithful to supply the needs for those areas, if we're faithful to minister to the people that that he's called us to minister to.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn in Wichita, Kansas.

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