Tampa Bay area nonprofits report more seniors seeking help with groceries

Linda Mote worked as soon as she turned 13, and she didn’t stop until nearly 50 years later, when arthritis and diabetes began to hamper her ability to deliver auto parts throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Now 70, she and her husband can’t afford shopping for food and other supplies, she said. On Monday, she walked into Feeding Tampa Bay, a nonprofit organization provides free groceries to people in her situation, for the first time.

“I did hard work all my life,” Mote said. “I don’t understand what’s going on in this world.”

Groups that serve the region’s poor say they’re seeing more seniors approach them for help with housing, groceries and other essentials. Many still have their houses, or have downsized to apartments and mobile homes, and they drive in their cars to reach these organizations. But they have to choose between other expenses and putting food on the table, said Metropolitan Ministries CEO Tim Marks.

His organization reported a 15% increase in the number of seniors looking to them for aid just this past fiscal year.

“We’re finding more of them just on their own, really struggling for the first time in their life,” Marks said. “Not knowing where to turn. And we’re trying to address that.”

That increase translated to 3,000 additional seniors seeking help, Marks said. With inflation in Tampa Bay still higher than the national average, Social Security payments and pension increases aren’t keeping up, many seniors are struggling to make ends meet. While some are going back to work, others are trying to seek alternatives due to poor health, clinging to their American ideal of retirement.

Mote’s husband still works two days a week, bringing in $90 crucial to keeping their heads above water, she said. Both of their fixed incomes combined total about $1,800 a month. With rent in their mobile home park going up, plus Mote’s insulin expenses and car insurance, she worries about keeping a roof over their heads. It took seven years for her Social Security check to go up about $150.

“Things keep going up and up and up,” Mote said. “We’re going to be out in a tent on the street.”

So this week the pair visited Feeding Tampa Bay for what the nonprofit calls “senior shopping,” when once a month retirees can put fresh meat and produce in their carts without having to pay for them.

They consider themselves lucky, Mote said. They can pool their income, and her husband can still work. They can afford frozen pizzas from Walmart to bring her blood sugar up, and yellow rice and beans. She doesn’t know how those only living off of $900 a month manage to do it, she said.

“Seniors have given their whole life to the community,” said Shannon Oliviero, spokesperson for Feeding Tampa Bay. “They’ve worked their whole lives so hard. We’re going to help them where we can.”

Some of those seeking assistance are already sleeping outside. Wade Arrington, 66, has been homeless since he began experiencing chronic pain in his leg several years before retirement. It forced him out of his job at Amalie Oil because he couldn’t stand up for eight hours, and now he survives off of disability pay, he said. He heads to Faith Cafe each afternoon for a free lunch, a shower and to check his mail.

Faith Cafe is one of many soup kitchens Metropolitan Ministries pairs with to feed the homeless. Staff typically see the most retirees come in at the end of the month when the monthly fixed income check begins to stretch thin, said Linda Goode, one of the board members who helps run the cafe. But it’s difficult to tell just how many are, in fact, seniors, because a life outside can make someone look older than they are, she said.

Arrington said he believes from personal experience that the problem is getting worse for seniors like him. He hopes to someday get into an assisted-living community near his family in Savannah, Georgia, but he can’t afford to travel, and he can’t afford the rising price of assisted living in Florida.

“Rent’s going up, people can’t pay for it,” he said. “Bottom line.”

At Tangerine Plaza in southern St. Petersburg, where Positive Impact Ministries puts groceries in the trunks of anyone who pulls into the lot, Executive Director Karen Rae Selm was able to survey the group’s clients last fall. Over a fifth of those seeking help were seniors, a slightly greater share than the overall senior population in St. Petersburg, according to the Census Bureau. And another third were between 55 and 65 years old.

Positive Impact offers the grocery service so people, including seniors, don’t have to choose between food and insurance payments, Selm said. She believes there will always be a need for organizations like hers for everyone who struggles with little to no income, but when it comes to seniors in poverty, the issue is a systemic problem rather than an individual one.

“We need to let these seniors know it’s not their fault,” Selm said. “They’ve worked hard, they’ve prepared for retirement, but what they didn’t prepare for was homeowner’s insurance doubling and the cost of groceries tripling.”