Loaves and Fishes closes Concord dining room, Apr 30

April 29, 2008

Click thru to read full press release from Loaves and Fishes regarding the closing of its Concord Dining Room located at St Michaels abutting Baldwin Park.

Where should Loaves and Fishes relocate its Concord dining room?

Walnut Creek (49%, 21 Votes)
Monument Boulevard (42%, 18 Votes)
Todos Santos Park (7%, 3 Votes)
Cowell Park (2%, 1 Votes)
Hillcrest Park (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 43

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Loaves and Fishes‘ last day at the Concord Dining Room will be April 30, 2008
Concord, CA: Loaves & Fishes of Contra Costa will be leaving St. Michaels & All Angels Church in Concord, which is one of our five locations where we serve hot, nutritious meals to the hungry in Contra Costa County. Our partnership is being terminated by St. Michaels after serving more than one million meals to the people of Concord from this dining hall.

Loaves & Fishes is collecting names of our regular clients, which are residences of Concord and come to the dining room in Concord. We are planning to deliver cold lunches to their residence five days per week. We will be providing meals to the rest of the clients by delivering cold lunches to the homeless shelter so those people that are homeless or those who are the working poor will be able to be fed at that location. We are working with the City of Concord and the County to get permission to use the shelter. This is a temporary short term solution that we hope will work. The other service will be to provide a hot meal for anyone who can get to the shelter after July 1st.

There is still a problem in Concord with the lack of focus by the City officials with the problem of hunger. Many people will go hungry if the City continues to look at the hunger problem as being the same as the homeless issue. The two matters need to be separated and focused on as separate issues with different solutions.

The Board and the staff of Loaves & Fishes have been diligently looking for a new home that will serve the poor and hungry residents of Concord. There are many people that live in the community that are on fixed and/or low incomes, including families with children that can not make ends meet without the hot meals that are served by Loaves & Fishes. Many of the people we serve in Concord are residents of the area and are part of the Concord community.

In just the past year, Loaves & Fishes has spent over $250,000 to provide meals in Concord to those who would go hungry without this help. L&F is supported by many residents of Concord and other Contra Costa residents both as volunteers and with financial donations. Churches, service organizations, government, businesses and foundations provide the rest of the funding necessary to provide this service to the City of Concord and its citizens.

At this point in time we need the people in Concord to step up and help provide a place where we will be able to meet the needs of the hungry in the community. Loaves & Fishes is looking for any place that has approximately 2,000 square feet of space where we can bring in the meals from our catering kitchen in Pittsburg and serve them. If anyone can help with a short or long term solution, please contact Loaves & Fishes. A facility close to the Monument Corridor or downtown Concord would be ideal. A store front, small warehouse, or restaurants are all possible sites from which we can serve the hungry.

The mission of Loaves and Fishes is to feed the hungry of Contra Costa County. The needs have never been greater due to the mortgage crisis, an economy moving into recession, as well as higher fuel and food costs. There are already more than 165,000 people living below the poverty line in the County. In Contra Costa County more and more retired or disabled people on fixed incomes are being forced to choose between food, rent, medical care, or prescription drugs. Loaves and Fishes of Contra Costa will continue to provide free hot nutritious meals at its four other locations in Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch and Oakley.

Loaves and Fishes is ready and willing to help those in need, but we need the public’s help to find place from which to serve those in need.