As Stimulus Checks Run Out, Granbury Nonprofits See Extreme Need Arising

Although the state has reopened, Granbury nonprofits and the communities they serve are still feeling the effects of the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression.

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing shut down hit the American economy hard with retail sales dropping by $46.2 billion from February to March, and unemployment rising in April to the highest it's been since the 1930s.

Employees of nonprofits have been some of the first to see the economic impact in Granbury.

Ruth’s Place Outreach Center Director Mia Best-Ruiz said it’s gotten worse in the past three weeks.

“When everything started, I feel like all of the nonprofits just kind of hopped on like ‘we’re going to help you in every single way we can,’ so there were all of these resources,” Best-Ruiz said. “And then the government also gave families the maximum amount of food stamps they could get and there was their stimulus, so there was like this huge amount of help at first. So I think we’re seeing more extreme need now because all of that's gone.”

When Best-Ruiz told a man who came in hungry that she would put a bag of food together for him, he pointed to a can of dog food on the table and asked if he could have that because he felt like he was going to faint. Best-Ruiz gave him chips instead so he could have something to sustain him while he waited for them to pack his food.

“We were like, you don’t have to eat dog food,” Best-Ruiz said.

In an effort to combat hunger, Ruth’s Place Outreach Center increased their food pantry output since the shutdown first began.

“We are serving way more families on a regular basis than we were when this all started,” Best-Ruiz said.

Best-Ruiz said unemployment benefits are not a viable option for a lot of people who worked in the service industry, because before losing their jobs, restaurants were cutting their employees’ hours dramatically due to a lack of business.

“When you file for unemployment they go by your last few paychecks,” Best-Ruiz said. “So people are getting like a tenth of what they got when they were working. It’s nothing.”

This is if they can get unemployment benefits at all.

“Typically you can’t get unemployment unless you’ve been fired,” Best-Ruiz said. “A lot of places didn’t say, ‘Hey you’ve been fired,’ they said, ‘We’ll call you when we can use you again.’ So there are a lot of families who still haven’t gotten unemployment.”

Mission Granbury Executive Director Dusti Scovel said she has also seen an increase in need in the community that correlates with government money running out.

“We saw kind of a calm to the storm when the stimulus checks started to arrive, but now bills are coming in due and they’re having to figure out how to manage the bills, only without another stimulus check,” Scovel said. “I think that helped people. It replaces a paycheck, but they were missing more than one month of paychecks.”

Scovel said many people calling Mission Granbury have never had to ask for help before, and they are desperate.

“They've got mouths to feed,” Scovel said. “And they never dreamed in a million years they’d have to ask for food from a food pantry, or help with their utility bills, and that they wouldn’t be able to get back to work.”

Within three days, three different people came to Mission Granbury needing help with a vehicle. They couldn’t get to work because their car broke down and they couldn’t afford to fix it.

Scovel said Mission Granbury has a mechanic who volunteers his time for car repairs, but with the increase in need coupled with the lack of public transportation in the area, they are trying to find more resources. A functioning vehicle can be the difference between scraping by and destitution.

“It’s the one thing that will get them-- it will keep them from becoming homeless, it will help them stand on their own two feet,” Scovel said. “It’s hard because we feel the weight of this desperation and we just don’t have enough of those kinds of resources. It would be a utopia if we did.”

Mission Granbury is doing what they can to increase their services. For example, their Weekend Food for Kids program went from backpacks of food for the weekend to backpacks of food for every day of the week, and now for the first time, they are continuing the program through the summer.

They also started delivering groceries to seniors, a service they hadn’t provided before the pandemic hit.

“We feel like our arms got a little longer in this process,” Scovel said. “If there’s any silver lining during COVID-19 it’s that we’ve been able to identify needs we didn’t know were there.”

If you need food or emergency assistance, contact Mission Granbury at 817-579-6866. If you need food or support in Oak Trail Shores, call Mia at Ruth’s Place Outreach Center, 817-579-1521.