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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, nothing was the same. No one knew what to expect as stay-at-home orders were issued, mask mandates went into effect and schools and businesses shut down. The one thing that the OUR Center knew was that things would be different on the other side but not what that would look like.
Prior to the pandemic, most of the OUR Center’s cases involved helping clients with one-time assistance. This included helping with utilities, rent and food just long enough for the client to get through a crisis, Marc Cowell, executive director of the OUR Center said.
Now that the pandemic has ended, according to the World Health Organization, the OUR Center staff is looking at what services their clients need in an attempt to establish a “new normal,” Cowell said.
The team is still developing what the new norm fully looks like, however, Cowell said there are some trends that can’t be ignored.
His staff has said that almost every household that seeks help from the OUR Center cannot get by with short-term assistance in order to remain stable.
“There is a much higher need than there once was for coordinated wrap-around services, more intense case management services,” Cowell said.
One of the center’s key strategies has always been to refer clients to its food market. By visiting the food market, clients can save $100-$200 which can be applied to rent, utilities or other bills.
However, resources are not able to keep up with the increased demand. Food donations are down 11% and business donations and food drives are down 15%, Cowell said. The decrease in donations has forced the OUR Center to buy food for the first time in the staff’s memory. In 2022, the OUR Center spent around $80,000 to restock its food pantry. This year it has allocated $200,000 to the effort.
“We are having to take a look at the current community need and how we can best meet it and if we continue to operate the way we did during the pandemic and even before the pandemic, we’re not really making a difference,” Cowell said.
Over the past few months, Cowell said the food market has seen a decrease in clients. Although his team has yet to determine why this is, they speculate that it is because there is less food in the market at the end of the week than at the beginning, he said.
“The main message is that things have changed. The needs of some of our community members are much more complex and they’re much deeper than they ever were before,” Cowell said. “One-time assistance to help with rent for this month is just not cutting it anymore. And in order to provide that support to stabilize those families it takes a lot more resources, it takes a lot more bandwidth. We are still seeing needs as high — if not higher — than they were during the pandemic, and they're more complex, which is supplying a whole new set of challenges for us in this ‘new normal.’”
