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Foodbank of Santa Barbara County launches campaign to retrofit its new Sharehouse in Goleta KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESSThe Foodbank of Santa Barbara County recently opened the Sharehouse and its Administration and Nutrition Promotion Center at 80 Coromar Drive in Goleta.
The Foodbank of Santa Barbara County is undertaking a four-month fundraising campaign to retrofit its recently-acquired Goleta warehouse into a fully functioning “Sharehouse,” which will enable the organization to increase its food storage capacity, improve services in South County and play a major role in disaster relief management for the region.
The organization has set a goal of raising $6 million by the end of the year.
That figure includes $2.5 million the Foodbank will need to carry out the renovations to the new facility, located at 80 Coromar Drive. The rest will be used to maintain regular operations during the process.
“The new Sharehouse in South County is going to have a major impact on all of the groups that we serve, whether they are low-income families, seniors and veterans who are on a fixed income and unhoused people,” Foodbank of Santa Barbara County CEO Erik Talkin told the News-Press. “What it’s going to mean is a lot of extra capacity across the county because we’ll be able to keep more food up in the north and not bring it down to the south, so it will mean a rise in capacity across the county and across all groups.”
VERONICA SLAVIN PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTOSA crowd gathers at the recent Sharehouse Festival at the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County’s new facility in Goleta.That rise in capacity will equate to an additional 80,000 pounds of food coming into the Foodbank every week.
That will help remedy the shortcomings of the organization’s current South County facility on Hollister Avenue, which only holds 15% of the food resources needed for operations in South County. The remainder is currently trucked down from the Foodbank’s North County facilities.
In addition to improving services for populations the Foodbank regularly serves, another primary use of the South County facility will be storing 1.2 million pounds of food to be used in the event of disasters, particularly those that may impact access to Highway 101 and cut off South County from quickly receiving aid.
“We all saw during the Thomas Fire and debris flow that just having one small break in the 101 can create chaos for weeks on end,” Mr. Talkin said. “But if there was a major earthquake and the 101 was affected at multiple sites, we wouldn’t be able to bring any food down from North County, and that’s why having a store of disaster food in South County is absolutely crucial.”
According to Mr. Talkin, the Foodbank plans to make “significant seismic upgrades beyond what is required by law,” as well as utilize emergency generators and solar panels to ensure the Sharehouse is able to remain operational in the event of an earthquake-related disaster.
The new Goleta warehouse will greatly increase the Foodbank’s storage capacity. Erik Talkin, CEO of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, addresses the audience at the Sharehouse Festival.The Foodbank has also worked with the Office of Emergency Management and agencies such as the Red Cross to develop a modern approach to disaster management for South County.
“In the past, a lot of disaster plans were based on the idea that people would come to central congregate sites and be fed together, like what you see if you watch news footage of (areas impacted by) hurricanes or something like that,” Mr. Talkin explained. “But realistically, that’s not going to happen here in Santa Barbara. People are going to want to shelter in place if there’s an earthquake, so we need to get food out to them rather than expecting them to come out to us. And the Sharehouse will be the central focal point of that plan.”
The new Sharehouse is also intended to allow the Foodbank to better address the unique food insecurity situation in Isla Vista, where both long-term and temporary student residents have consistently reported rises in food insecurity as housing costs in the enclave exploded over the past decade.
“(The Sharehouse will ensure) that the agencies who we partner with in the Isla Vista area, and the distributions that we do ourselves, will have access to an increased amount of food,” Mr. Talkin told the News-Press. “In Isla Vista, the food insecurity is two-fold in terms of there being students or other people connected to the college, and then there are also local families in that area that are very food insecure as well. So we’re really hoping to address both of those populations (with the new facility).”
email: jdaniels@newspress.com
FYI
To learn more about the Sharehouse project, and to donate and get involved with the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County, visit foodbanksbc.org.
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