Cars are backed up along Sahara Avenue during a drive-thru Three Square food distribution at Palace Station Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Sunday, May 10, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Traffic has been light in most of Las Vegas as fears of catching coronavirus and business closures have kept most people home for most of the past two months. But drive near the intersection of Sahara Avenue and Rancho Drive on a Thursday morning and you might get caught in a backup.
Every Thursday, hundreds of people line up in cars starting in the early hours of the morning to get food from a pop-up drive-thru food bank at Palace Station. Some people arrived this past week as early as 1 a.m. for the 8 a.m. opening, one volunteer was told.
The long line of cars shows how the coronavirus pandemic and economic shutdown have affected Las Vegans, said Larry Scott, chief operating officer of Three Square, the organization running the food bank. A record 17% of Nevadans are now unemployed, and more than 350,000 people have filed unemployment claims since the state-mandated business shutdown began in March.
“The cars clearly represent all economic classes. We have the nicest 2020 automobiles, and we have old cars that are overheating and breaking down while waiting in line,” Scott said.
Some of the people picking up food have been using Three Square’s services since before the pandemic. But others interviewed the past two weeks said this was their first time there.
One individual said he worked for Amazon before coronavirus. Two others said they cleaned hotels. One man pointed to the Uber logo on his vehicle when asked what he previously did for a living. There are no tourists left to drive around, leaving him with little income, he said.
Tyler Mobley, 30, worked for DoorDash, McDonald’s and at FireRock Steakhouse before losing the latter two jobs, he said. The father of one said his remaining income through DoorDash, a prepared food delivery service, had helped him and his family stay afloat during this time.
“We’re so-so,” he said after getting his food. “We’re surviving.”
Ruth Garay, a 20-year resident of Las Vegas, used to clean houses before the pandemic began. She’s a single mom with three kids, two of whom live with her, said her young son, who translated for her from English to Spanish after they got their food.
“She doesn’t have a job. She pays all the bills herself,” said Garay’s son. “She’s also scared of us getting sick. She doesn’t have family in Las Vegas. She’s alone.”
Some of the food bank volunteers are retired, but most are out of work themselves, said volunteer Luis Rosales. A server at the Venetian, Rosales has been volunteering for Three Square six days a week since the resort temporarily closed its doors due to the pandemic.
“It’s like my full-time job now that there’s no work to go to, so it keeps me busy,” said Rosales, 30. “It makes me feel like I’m out there working, but I’m also helping the community as well.”
When the pandemic first hit Las Vegas, Three Square anticipated daily demand at its 20 drive-thru food distribution sites to be about 250 cars per site. But at a few locations, including Palace Station, the organization is serving an average of 1,100 cars each week and between 1.2 and 1.3 million pounds of food weekly compared to a million pounds before coronavirus, Scott said. That’s the equivalent of 250,000 meals per week, a spokesperson said.
“I can tell you the community desperately needs the food supply,” Scott said.
Demand for food assistance seems to have increased valleywide. Catholic Charities, which serves a free meal at its central Las Vegas location at 10 a.m. daily, typically fed between 500 and 900 people per day before the pandemic. Now, it’s consistently at 800-900 people, said Leslie Carmine, media and community relations director for Catholic Charities.
Demand for the organization’s Meals on Wheels program for seniors has also been unusually high, according to Carmine. The program’s waiting list averaged about 300 people on any given day until late March, just as unemployment skyrocketed.
“That waiting list jumped to 2,400 during first few weeks (of this),” Carmine said.
The unprecedented demand has led several local charitable organizations, nonprofits and the Clark County Commission to start a new no-contact food delivery program, Delivering with Dignity. As of Monday, the organization had delivered 26,500 meals to homes across the valley since its inception in late March, said Punam Mathur, executive director of the Elaine P Wynn and Family Foundation.
“We fully expect it’s going to grow, because vulnerability is going to be increasing for an awful lot of people,” Mathur said.
Although food delivery organizations say the community has been generous with donations, Scott worries about meeting the demand for food in the long term if coronavirus continues to infect people and businesses are closed.
While Nevada began its first phase of reopening Saturday, virus cases statewide and in Clark County are still climbing, with 4,573 people in Clark County having contracted the virus as of Wednesday. That’s 594 more confirmed infections than there were a week earlier.
Hotels and casinos have donated food to Three Square during the pandemic to help with food supply, but that probably isn’t sustainable, Scott said. Unless demand goes down, Three Square will need to acquire more funding.
“In order for us to continue to distribute at this level, we’ll have to begin purchasing food at a much greater percentage than what we’ve ever done before,” he said. “We need help from the community to help fund that.”
Around 10 a.m. Thursday, Three Square volunteers started packing up for the day, having delivered all the food they had on hand. One of the last people to get food was Matty Bankston, a longtime cook on the Strip who is now out of work.
Bankston said he was pleased with how quickly the line moved and about the opportunity to pick up free food.
“It helps,” he said. “It helps a lot.”
