From NBCnews.com
Photo: Jillian Ozuna, a mom of five and a Navy spouse, helps distribute food from Feeding San Diego at Dewey Elementary School. NBC News
Dozens of people formed a line outside Dewey Elementary School on a recent Monday, awaiting the arrival of a Feeding San Diego truck that gives out free groceries every other week.
The vast majority weren’t homeless or even newly unemployed. They’re the husbands and wives of U.S. military service members.
“I knew we wouldn’t be wealthy, but I thought it would be a lot more manageable,” said Desiree Mieir, a mother of four whose Navy husband’s most recent deployment lasted almost eight months.
Mieir can’t afford cable and often leaves her home’s air conditioning shut off to keep her utility bill down. “I didn’t know I’d have to try this hard,” she said.
To make ends meet, Mieir and thousands of other military families around the country routinely rely on federal food assistance, charities or loans from family. Their struggles are caused by a variety of factors: the high cost of living in cities like San Diego, difficulty qualifying for federal food assistance, and a transient life that makes it challenging for spouses to build careers.
It’s difficult to quantify the full scope of the problem. The Department of Defense doesn’t collect data on how many service members are seeking food assistance. But interviews with dozens of military family members, as well as visits to makeshift food pantries like the one at Dewey Elementary, indicate that the number of military families struggling to put food on the table is substantial.
Pentagon records obtained by NBC News through a Freedom of Information Act request give just a hint of the problem. The data shows that during the 2018-19 school year, a third of children at DOD-run schools on military bases in the United States — more than 6,500 children — were eligible for free or reduced lunches. At one base — Georgia’s Fort Stewart — 65 percent were eligible.
“I think it is a national outrage,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former army helicopter pilot, said. “Can you imagine being deployed and you’re in the Persian Gulf, or you’re in Iraq right now, and you’re worried whether or not your kids are able to have a meal?”
“We should say if you come to the military, your kids are going to get a good education, you’re going to get good housing, and your kids are going to be fed,” she added.
