Seattle Archdiocese

St Leo the Great Parish, Tacoma
St Leo the Great Parish in Tacoma is the site of the Food Connection and Hospitality Kitchen

St. Leo’s Food Connection, the third largest food bank in the state, will soon begin serving families with a mobile food bank.

“We’re going to take groceries out to the poorest people in the community who can’t get to the food bank,” said Kevin Glackin-Coley, director of St. Leo’s Food Connection. “It’s definitely a ‘leap before you look’ kind of thing for us.”

The Food Connection, located in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood, fed about 100,000 people last year with 1.7 million pounds of food. St. Leo’s will “hit the road” with the first mobile food bank service Saturday, April 22nd.

Glackin-Coley said the problem of people not being able to get to food banks is a growing one throughout the region.

“Part of the difficulty is a spike in fuel costs, which makes it more expensive for people to drive if they have cars,” he explained. “Housing prices keep going up too and that pushes people further out in the county away from the core of the city where services are located.”

The Lakewood Hunger Taskforce identified the Springbrook neighborhood as one of the most destitute in Pierce County. Most residents live in apartments or trailer parks. Many don’t have cars and rely on the bus for transportation. There are also no grocery stores in the community and only one convenience store.

“It’s a little enclave of folks in need who can’t get to us,” said Glackin-Coley “so we’ll go to them.”

Volunteers with St. Leo’s Food Connection will drive a delivery truck to four intersections in the Springbrook neighborhood and hand out food.

Families will receive a box of dried goods, such as cereal, pasta or bread, along with fresh produce that will be added to the package the morning of the 22nd. Each box is enough to serve a family of three for three days. Large families will get multiple boxes.

St. Leo’s is working with groups in the Lakewood area to let residents know about the mobile food bank program.

Glackin-Coley said he doesn’t know how many people to expect when their delivery truck rolls into Springbrook in a few weeks.

“We’re going to learn as we go. If we sat down and took the time to figure out exactly how to do this program, it’d never get done,” he said. “St. Leo’s has been running a food bank for 24 years, and I’m confident we can make this work.”

A hopeful community
The block where St. Leo’s parish and the Food Connection are located might be one of the most generous neighborhoods in Western Washington. While volunteers hand out groceries at the food bank, next door a separate program – the Hospitality Kitchen – serves 1,000 free hot meals a day.

The Hospitality Kitchen also started with parishioners from St. Leo’s Parish who fed people out of the priest’s kitchen in the 1980s.

By the mid 1990s, the Hilltop area of Tacoma had a bad reputation for drug crimes and many dealers hung out around the Hospitality Kitchen at 1323 South Yakima Avenue.

“It was the top place in Pierce County for cocaine and heroin sales,” said Jim Anderson, director of the Hospitality Kitchen. “You could hear drug deals being made at the kitchen and on K Street below us. The staff had great intentions, but they were overwhelmed.”

In 2001 Catholic Community Services took over the Hospitality Kitchen. Under Anderson’s direction they worked with the Tacoma Police Department, nearby Bates Technical College and neighbors to end crime at the kitchen.

“We brought in a trained staff, hired extra security and set clear rules and consequences for criminal behavior,” he explained. “The neighborhood went from being scared and angry to being extremely supportive and today we have very few problems.”

Anderson, who’s been with Catholic Community Services for 25 years, said the majority of homeless people who eat in the Hospitality Kitchen have chronic problems. Most have serious mental health issues or are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

“Of all the jobs I’ve had, this is one of the more discouraging ones in terms of the amount of suffering I see,” said Anderson. “For most people who are homeless the dye was cast by the time they were eight years old, growing up in families with violence, mental health issues or chemical dependency.”

He said people who work with homeless men and women often go through stages of sorrow. First there’s a period of “stunned outrage” because of the problem, followed by a burst of energy wanting to “do something to solve homelessness.” Volunteers often go through a phase of depression brought on by the feeling that “there’s not much we can do, other than what we’re already doing.”

The Hospitality Kitchen has social service experts on site who help clients get Veterans or Social Security benefits.

Anderson and other Catholic Community Services leaders are working with the City of Tacoma on plans to create more affordable housing and transitional housing for homeless people in the area.

“We do have success stories of people who only need our food service temporarily and there’s always hope,” Anderson said, as he reflected on how the neighborhood helped eliminate drug problems at the kitchen five years ago. “The hope is in the community.”

To learn more contact:
St. Leo the Great Parish
710 S 13th St
Tacoma, WA 98405
Phone: 253-272-5236
Website: www.stleoparish.org