The COVID-19 epidemic continues to worsen, the U.S. economy has been hit hard, more and more people are unemployed, and the number of hungry people across the country has soared.
According to U.S. media reports, the number of hungry people in the United States exceeded 50 million in 2020, which nearly tripled in a year, and more than one third of them were children.
The epidemic continues to worsen in many places, causing a sharp increase in the number of hungry people.
Julie Gibbs is a Texas teacher who lives in the countryside with her six children. The pandemic has caused her serious economic problems and is unable to provide enough food for all her children.
Therefore, Julie began to raise chickens in her backyard and wanted to solve the problem of food and clothing in this way.
Teacher Julie Gibbs: Generally speaking, life is crazy now. I can’t even buy more than 1 gallon of milk from the supermarket for my children, which can only last a day. Because I have a lot of children, I need 60 eggs a week.
To solve this problem, I began to raise hens myself, and my children took care of them.
Shauna Gray and her husband have lost their jobs in restaurants during the pandemic, and the whole family can only survive on food relief. In order to get a free lunch for her three children, Shawna has to take a three-hour bus to the food collection point every day.
In order to make the children full, she and her husband often eat only one meal a day.
Unemployed Shawna Gray: We need to make sure that the children have their share of food.
we have to save an extra copy for them, so my father and I often have to eat only one meal a day.
Feeding America, the largest anti-hunger organization in the United States, reported that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated poverty and food shortages for a considerable part of the United States.
In 2020, more than 50 million Americans faced hunger problems, that is to say, nearly one in six Americans are worried about food and clothing.
Of the more than 50 million hungry people, there are 18 million children.
According to statistics, 84 percent of poor households in the United States now choose to buy the cheapest food to feed their children, and 25% of poor children rely entirely on relief food for food and clothing – in Texas, for example, more than 2 million children in the state face hunger in 2020.
Rahada Mutiya, CEO of Arina Food Bank: More than 200,000 new children facing hunger are added every day in the United States, and this number has increased by 60% in the months since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, the continuous deterioration of the epidemic in the United States has also caused a surge in unemployment and a large number of ordinary people have lost their jobs.
Rising unemployment also highlights the problems of hunger and food shortages.
Unemployed single father Carnell Pepras: I’m a single father. I just want some food for my family.
Because of the epidemic, nurses who now have no work licenses have also been allowed to return to work.
The employment crisis worsened, and the American people complained that the relief funds would be difficult to implement.
The employment crisis in the United States continues to worsen, and a large number of Americans have lost their jobs. Late last year, Congress passed a second round of economic stimulus bill, raising the amount of unemployment benefits – however, due to harsh application conditions and inefficient government, a large number of unemployed people still have difficulty in receiving this life-saving money.
Janet Watkins from North Carolina applied for unemployment benefits after losing her job before the outbreak of the epidemic. However, the response was that the epidemic was not the direct cause of her unemployment, so she was not eligible to apply for unemployment benefits.
Subsequently, Watkins filed an appeal in June last year, and in August, the court replied that a hearing would be held in October. During this period, the response of multiple departments to Watkins’ demands was to shirk their responsibilities.
Unemployed Janet Watkins: Even one day I hung up four times.
I kept calling back, and it took me eight hours in total. Communicate with no fewer than five people, and each of these five people has a different set of statements.
Since then, Watkins has not been able to receive unemployment benefits. The Watkins case is only one of a total of 62,000 unemployment-related lawsuits in North Carolina.
According to local employment department data, 26,000 of these lawsuits are waiting for hearings, and another 24,000 lawsuits have not yet been scheduled for specific hearings. Nationwide, one in five unemployment-related lawsuits needs to wait four months before a final decision.
