Patsy Dowling desperately needed to find $700.

A client had called Dowling, the director of Mountain Projects, and begged for help. The woman had to come up with a $700 mortgage payment or would lose her home. Even though the single mother worked 40 hours a week, her $9 an hour salary wasn’t cutting it. She’d suffered a string of bad luck — her car caught on fire and burned her garage down, which led her homeowner’s policy to triple. Then someone robbed the family of its heating oil last winter. Months later, the woman hadn’t been able to land on her feet.

“She was begging me — if I can just get caught up, I can make it,” Dowling recounts. But even as Dowling explained the woman’s plight, she knew there was next to nothing she could do. The agency, which serves the low-income and elderly in Haywood and Jackson counties, has a waiting list of two and a half years for rental and mortgage assistance. That morning, it had already received 15 phone calls for people needing air conditioning. It wasn’t even noon. The woman’s $700 request was lost in a mountain of needs that’s overwhelming non-profits all over Western North Carolina.

Rising food and gas prices are having a significant impact on families and individuals in WNC, and non-profits are struggling to keep up. Staples like milk and eggs have seen a price increase of 21 percent and 28 percent respectively over the course of a year. Oil has risen to a record $140 a barrel.

An adult with one child must make $12.75 to achieve a living wage, according to Dowling. With two adults and two kids, that goes up to $18.54. For those that work in many common WNC occupations — sales and retail, office work, food preparation, building maintenance — hourly wages fall below those levels.

As a result, the numbers of those seeking assistance from crisis agencies have increased.

“You’ve got wage stagnation coupled with spikes in food and fuel costs. You’re seeing people who’ve been working hard and kind of struggling before that are now seeking a lot more help,” says Joshua Stack, a public affairs coordinator with Asheville-based Manna Food Bank.

The Macon County Care Network (CareNet) has experienced a 30 percent increase in aid applications compared to the first quarter of last year. The Community Table, a soup kitchen in Jackson County, now serves supper to about 60 people four nights a week as opposed to an average of 30 who would show up last year, according to director Amy Grimes-McClure. At Haywood Christian Ministries, “We never have a day where under 10 people request a box of food,” says director Lisa James. One day two weeks ago, the agency got 27 requests.

New people, new needs

Non-profits are reporting a surge in people who have run into trouble and are making their first-ever requests for help.

“We’re seeing a lot of people who a year ago would probably not have needed our help,” says WHO Bailey.

“The clients we serve are not our typical clients anymore,” agrees Dowling. “We’re seeing new faces in need. It’s like an ocean of people who have never asked for help, people who are articulate and smart and educated.”

According to Bailey, two people earning minimum wage could previously support a family to some extent. But now, gas prices almost negate that salary, she says — “with two people working, it’s costing $100 a week to go back and forth to work.”

A phenomenon that Dowling and others are noticing is the shift away from generational poverty to situational poverty — where an event has pushed people into poverty who have never experienced it before.

“I see people who are doing just fine in life and then boom — something happens,” Dowling says. “It pushes you into a spiral, and once you get behind, it’s hard to catch up.”

It doesn’t take much. Someone gets sick, loses their job and then loses their healthcare — leaving them with huge medical bills. It can happen in an instant, and to almost anyone.

Stack, though, says it’s gone a step further. He’s seeing people who previously didn’t have to seek assistance unless they suffered a medical event. Now, Stack says, “that sort of tragic event is no longer necessary to make it hard for people to make ends meet.”

The big chill

The needs of the WNC population are vast, but one in particular was relayed strongly by several of the agencies interviewed — heating oil for the upcoming winter months.

“I’m just scared to death that we’re going to have people cold in Haywood County this winter because of the heating oil situation,” says James of Haywood Christian Ministries She described heating oil as her agency’s number one need, surpassing even food.

In the winter of 2006-2007, heating oil ran between $300 and $350 for 100 gallons, James says. By the end of this winter, the price had risen to almost $500 for the same amount. It’s only June, and kerosene is running at $4.67 a gallon. There’s no telling what the price will be come winter.

“I’ve been worried about heating oil since March or April when it started escalating almost every day,” James says. “It’s still escalating almost daily, and will all summer.”

That’ll be tough for many to afford, she says.

“If you’re living on $1,200 of social security or $700 of disability (a month), how can you afford $500 a month?”

According to Dowling, the state gives agencies an allocation of $600 per person to spend on heating oil. “Last year, that was OK — you could get 100 gallons of heating oil and that was alright,” she says.

It still wasn’t enough to meet all the needs, however. The hardest thing for Dowling was the numbers of veterans coming through her doors that couldn’t stay warm.

“People who serve our country and put their life on the line are cold,” she says.

This winter, though, Dowling says the state’s allocation won’t be enough at all.

Oil companies have adopted a policy this year that they won’t deliver less than 100 gallons of heating oil, because the fuel costs of delivery are too prohibitive to bother with small amounts.

“My fear is that they’re not going to be delivering less than 100 gallons, and we’re not going to be able to buy 100 gallons,” Dowling says. “This upcoming heating season has got me majorly concerned.”

Agencies say the public likely isn’t aware of their predicament since the summer heat pushes thoughts of winter aside.

“I know people are going to say good grief, it’s June, it’s still warm, but in six months, we’re going to be scrambling for heating oil,” says James.

An explosion of need

Non-profits are calling the current levels of need unprecedented.

“(Funding) is not keeping pace with the increased need,” Stack says.

Agencies are definitely feeling the pinch. Most rely heavily on Manna Food Bank for food donations. Manna supplies 70 percent of the food for Haywood County agencies, 62 percent in Jackson, 73 percent in Macon and 86 percent in Swain.

“If it’s hitting here, it’s hitting everywhere,” says Stack.

Manna is hurting. Right now donations and finances remain roughly the same as last year.

“The problem is that food is more expensive, and the cost to get the food here is dramatically more expensive,” Stack says.

As a result, the same amount of money is stretching a much shorter distance.

CareNet in Macon County is one agency feeling Manna’s pinch. Its food bill doubled last year. Since donations are down, the organization must buy its own food — which is a hefty expense, says Bailey.

Stack says Manna’s situation has gotten dramatic enough that the organization is having to engage the communities it assists by holding food drives.

“It’s the first time Manna has conducted food drives on this scale,” he says.

That’s one way the community can help. Financial donations are also desperately needed, but Dowling says it can be as simple as cooking an extra meal for a senior citizen neighbor who may be short on cash.

Dowling wants to see focus returned to a way of mountain life gone by, where neighbors knew and watched out for one another.

If it’s cold, for example, and there’s an extra room, invite a neighbor over who may not have heat. Or help winterize the home of an elderly person or family.

“We did it here when I was a kid. We all looked out for each other, but we’ve gotten away from that,” she says. “There’s a lot of ways people can help in simple ways.”