Eastside social-service agencies struggling as more people seek help

Until two months ago, Marta Belmont had a job, and so did her husband. She lost her retail manager position right before Christmas. Her husband lost his job laying tile in January.

They resisted asking for help at first because they had some savings and assumed others needed social services more than they did. But with two kids, another on the way and bills to pay, Belmont, 27, turned up at a food bank last week in Bothell for the first time.

"We're down to nothing," she said. "We probably shouldn't have waited so long."

With a recession on and winter storms that hurt local businesses and their employees, social-service agencies have been getting more requests for food, emergency energy assistance and housing. On the Eastside — where hard times aren't always in plain sight — cities have been trying to keep pace by increasing funding.

"We find that need tends to be a little more hidden on the Eastside," said Denise Stephens, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Hopelink, which has six emergency centers around the suburbs. "You might see an occasional person holding a sign on an offramp off of 520, but you don't see people obviously in need on the Eastside like you do in other areas."

In 2009-10, Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland and Issaquah all passed additional funding for social services, and together are spending millions more on social services. Other efforts, such as a Kirkland neighborhood food drive last fall, also are part of an effort to help out agencies.

"Whenever there's a change in the economic situation, the human-service agencies feel it immediately," said Emily Leslie, Human Services Division manager for Bellevue.

But even with the added attention, funding still isn't keeping up with the demand.

At Redmond-based Hopelink, requests for shelter and housing assistance grew 70 percent over the past year and the number of visits families made to food banks rose 23 percent between September and December. In January 2009, 43 percent of the people who have come in for energy assistance have never come for help before, Stephens said.

"When the need is growing so much, even people digging in a little deeper to give more than they usually do, even that has not been enough to keep up with the need," Stephens said.

The December snowstorms made it worse, said Tom Brewer, director of spiritual services and chaplain for Jubilee Reach Center, which serves the Lake Hills area in Bellevue. Many restaurant workers, domestic workers and other laborers lost money when the storms shut down traffic and business throughout the region.

These people live day-to-day and week-to-week, Brewer said, and some are still dealing with the impact of the snowstorms.

"We're at that point in time when the crunch really hits a lot of folks," he said. "They've had to make a choice between paying their bills and buying food."

Jubilee has been focused on keeping people in housing, making sure they are fed, and keeping the lights on.

"The unhappy thing is there's a lot of very hardworking folks in that situation," Brewer said.

On a recent food-bank day at the Northshore Hopelink center in Bothell, people holding cardboard boxes, shopping bags and crates lined up to pick up frozen chicken, milk and sandwich bread. Volunteers handed lollipops to kids.

A woman who identified herself only as Helen said she was facing foreclosure on her home. A mother of five, the 40-year-old Bothell resident started coming to the food bank last summer to save money and try and keep her home. The food bank saves her about $200 a month.

"We were planning to sell the house, but in this hard situation there's no way to sell it," she said.

Belmont has been applying to retail jobs everywhere she can think of. But the Woodinville resident still hasn't found a job, despite seven years of retail management experience. Her husband has been doing some jobs on the side for friends, but it's not enough.

She tried to get some help to pay her electric bill in January, but Hopelink had run out of funds and told her to come back in February. She has an appointment for Feb. 17. She hopes the lights don't go out before then.

"Trying to get help is hard because so many people need it right now," she said.

Nicole Tsong: 206-464-2150 or ntsong@seattletimes.com