Clark County Food Bank (Photo by The Columbian)

VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON - They are the kind of statistics sure to shock everyone, probably not surprise anyone - from July 2009 through June 2010, reports the Washington Department of Commerce, there were almost 7.8 million visits Washington state's network of 320 food banks to receive some 63,000 tons of free food.

Need any other proof that we are, indeed, in the middle of a recession?

HUD isn't in the food business. That's the province of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Stamp and commodities programs or Health and Human Services' WIC program.

But HUD is in the business of helping communities fund the bricks-and-mortar infrastructure that serves the needs of low and moderate income people.

Like people who live in Clark County, Until the end of 2008, about 25,000 people a month visited the Clark County Food Bank. When the economic boom went bust in 2009, visits to the food bank started increasing “alarmingly.” From 2008 to 2009, in fact, it saw an “overall increase in need” of “about 200 percent.”

“The demand of need for food by folks who are hurting economically has been growing the last few years and,” food bank vice chair Jim Youde told The Columbian. And, with the state's highest unemployment rate, “is continuing to grow” in Clark County.

Right now, the food bank is in an 8,000 square-foot warehouse which has served it well in years when the demand was lower. But as demand has risen, it's clearly become “inadequate, inefficient and outdated,” Without “ the space to properly store, sort, repack and distribute food products,” it “routinely turns down bulk food and large shipments of fresh produce.”

The solution? Simple. A new, 22,000 square-foot warehouse. But that, obviously, takes money, $4.2 million, to be precise. That's not exactly “chump change,” especially in a recession.

But, in what food bank development officer Greg Flakus told The Columbian was “an amazing story of how a community can get together,” thanks to $1.5 million from the State Legislature, almost $1.2 million in CDBG funds from Clark County and, probably most significantly, almost $1.6 million in private funds - including $450,000 raised in a single night - the food bank hit its goal in early December.

“We made it,” Flakus reported to The Columbian which observed that he did so “breathing a definite sigh of relief.”

Construction, he added should begin in March with an opening in the fall, hopefully in time for the annual Walk & Knock, Clark County's largest food drive.

“One of the hallmarks of HUD funds - whether under the normal, appropriations process or the Recovery Act - is a built-in flexibility that gives communities control how those funds are best spent to meet their local priorities,” said Mary McBride, HUD's Northwest Regional Administrator. “HUD does the providing, while local communities do the deciding. What's happening with our resources in Clark County is a perfect example of why, in communities across the country, that approach works so well.”

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