There is a crying need for a congressional investigation into a nationwide free food box distribution racket being perpetrated by America’s Second Harvest and its affiliates such as the San Francisco Food Bank. Tied into that racket is a HUD rent-subsidy racket. The combined rackets are costing the city, state, and federal governments billions of wasted dollars, they need to be drastically overhauled, and in the meantime all federal and state funds designated for food box distribution should be cut off, entirely. Here is a sample of who is getting subsidized rent at a typical building under the HUD's Section 8 multiple housing program, this one in San Francisco and accommodating 310 residents.
+Number of foreign-born residents: 283. Number of U.S.-born: 27
+Number of foreign-born residents who speak English: Around 100.
+Number of residents born in the USSR (Russia/Ukraine): 190
(persons from the USSR living in San Francisco comprise around 5 percent of the city’s population, but around 60-65 percent of this building's population.)
+Number of Asia-born residents (almost entirely Chinese): 90.
+Number of Europe-descended caucasian residents born in the U.S.: 25.
+Number of black (or African-American residents): 3 (2 U.S. born, one foreign).
+Number of Latinos: 2 (both foreign-born).(Latinos now constitute around 45 percent of San Francisco’s population.)
The Nature of the Foreign-Borns
Many of the foreign-borns do not speak English. Whether they do or not, they form their own cliques and take no interest in U.S. affairs. Few vote. They read periodicals in their own languages. Since many speak no English and many others are deficient in English, the landlord must provide all notices distributed to residents in three languages. This is a nationwide pattern, and the situation is costing this nation billions of dollars. Most of the USSR and China-born elders at the sample building are the parents or grandparents of opulent families – which is a basic means of how they got here in the first place. Unlike the social pattern of the past, the children or grandchildren, while willing to provide a lot of possessions and entertainments and financial help, do not want the elders in their dwelling places. Seeing HUD programs that enable them to get away with what they do, they dump their parents and grandparents on the Government so that the rent for the elders can be subsidized and thus these opulent children and grandchildren are saved full market rent expense (which most can afford). Such are the “poor, elderly” persons receiving free food boxes that are supplied in large part from state and federal government funds.
Who is Getting the Food Boxes
America’s Second Harvest (ASH), headquartered in Chicago, runs a nationwide food box program effected by such local affiliates as the San Francisco Food Bank. Their staffs consist of men and women paid huge salaries to carry on the racket they perpetrate on behalf of their boards of directors consisting of corporate executives whose purpose is to pose as humanitarians devoting part of their mercenary lives to the poor and “hungry.” ASH and its local affiliates, such as the San Francisco Food Bank, advertise over the internet and in mailers and on tv and radio that they are in business to “end hunger in America.” But here is a sample look at just who is receiving their free food boxes, this one at the sample building, one of the sites for distribution:
-Total number of recipients of the food boxes: 380, consisting of elderly persons or their “proxies” (young persons authorized to pick up the boxes).
-Number of sample building residents of the 380: 80 (the rest of the residents disdain the food boxes, which contain unhealthy junk that should never be fed to the elderly, since they are full of too much fat, sodium, and sugar – dangers to the elderly, who are subject to heart disease and diabetes).
-Number of U.S. born residents getting the food boxes: 2 or 3.
Types of foreign-born residents getting the food boxes:
* Owners of automobiles valued at between $15,000-$25,000.
* Owners of luxurious furniture, clothing, and jewelry valued in the thousands of dollars.
* Travelers abroad who spend several weeks at a time away from EPA on trips costing thousands of dollars.
* Patrons of expensive restaurants.
Number of EPA residents who actually need a free food box: 0.
Nature of the 300 outsiders getting the free food boxes: They can and do get free food – three times a day if they wish - from churches, organizations, senior service centers, and the like, all over the neighborhood and in other parts of San Francisco.
Number of the 380 recipients who need a free food box: 0.
What Happens to the Food Boxes and Their Contents
Large amounts of the food are thrown away. Boxes are given away by the recipients to building employees, at least one mail carrier, and friends and relatives (some waiting outside the building in expensive automobiles to get the food boxes). The “proxies,” who have made deals with elders to get the food boxes for them, take the food boxes for themselves or sell them for cash and drugs.
Why State and Federal Funding Should be Ended
For all of the above reasons, plus the fact that all the free food that the genuinely poor need is supplied to them by privately funded organizations which do not need any help from the state and federal governments. ASH and its affiliates, such as the San Francisco Food Bank, are among those – and there are thousands of others. There is no earthly reason for the state and federal governments to be funding the food box racket. The money should be diverted to programs that take care of poor single mothers, family breadwinners suddenly laid off work in corporate and other types of “downsizings,” and increases in certain types of programs such as SSI that are not producing sustainable income for recipients. Meanwhile, the funds for the food box programs are going to waste.