Before the pandemic, Executive Director Dayna Scott likened Broomfield FISH to a safety net.
Residents turned to FISH after facing some sort of shock — in need of a job, trying to pay off a large bill or recently losing childcare and forced to stay home and so forth. Generally, individuals would come to FISH for three to six months to get back on their feet.
But over the course of the past year and a half, FISH grew from a safety net to a lifeline.
“We were seeing people who were like, ‘I can’t get back on my feet even if I tried because I am paying 70% of my income on rent’ and ‘I don’t have anything left at the end of the day, and if I don’t come to FISH for food my children will not eat,'” Scott said Wednesday. “Or, ‘I’m a senior living on a fixed income and my costs have gone up and if I don’t come to FISH I will not eat. Or I will eat but I won’t be able to pay for a prescription medicine.'”
FISH — Fellowship In Serving Humanity — was founded in 1963 and has continued to grow since then. The nonprofit serves Broomfield residents living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line through their food bank, emergency financial assistance, transportation assistance and through their partnerships with more than 30 organizations.
The nonprofit is the only food bank and family resource center in Broomfield.
“While we’re known as a food bank, we do a lot more than that,” FISH Community Engagement Specialist Emily Crouse-Joo said. “We’re about helping people back onto the path of self-sufficiency. Hunger is a symptom of a wider problem, so we address the emergent need. We want to make sure they have a consistent roof over their head, they’re able to turn on their lights, they can feed their children and we connect them with agency partners to help them back onto the path of self-sufficiency.”
Thousands of pounds of food regularly circulate through FISH’s food bank or marketplace. When residents come in, they go through an intake process to determine specific needs and how much food will be needed to feed the person and their family. The shopper then takes a grocery cart through the aisles of the marketplace, choosing which food items they need from the color-coordinated shelves that represent the maximum quantity per visitor.
The marketplace has dairy, meat, dry goods, fresh produce and personal care items, as well as special sections for dietary restrictions. To shoppers, it looks and feels like any other grocery store. Behind the scenes, a handful of staff keep the market running with the help of roughly 220 weekly volunteers.
“And kids, when they come shopping with their parents, they don’t know,” Crouse-Joo said of the marketplace. “It’s a dignity model. That was one thing that was really hard with staff and with volunteers when we moved to a drive-up model. It took away that dignity, which is such a cornerstone of who we are.”
At the height of coronavirus restrictions the marketplace was forced to close, though FISH didn’t skip a beat. It transitioned outdoors, giving out prepared boxes of food to those who drove through the green winterized tent, affectionately called “the tunnel of love.” The marketplace was able to open to in-person shopping in June, a milestone for both shoppers and staff.
FISH works with local grocery stores, Community Food Share, We Don’t Waste, Conscious Alliance and local farmers to stock the marketplace, and in 2020 FISH distributed 1,547,365 pounds of food.
“It’s like a nucleus of the Broomfield family here, and I think it’s a visual representation of the love our community has for all of our neighbors, Crouse-Joo said of the community-wide effort FISH is.
As the pandemic progresses and with the marketplace reopened, visits from residents in need of food have slightly decreased, Development Assistant Maggie Sava said. But one need that hasn’t slowed is rental assistance.
FISH spent about $800,000 in 2020 helping people with rent. So far this year, it has spent $1.3 million in rent assistance, Crouse-Joo said. The nonprofit has helped 730 families with housing stability since October.
“Broomfield FISH’s focus when it comes to housing is in the prevention of homelessness,” Crouse-Joo said. “We know it’s easiest and most effective to keep a family in their home than it is to get a family that has lost their home back into a place. That’s why we make such a significant investment in keeping families housed.”
An eviction moratorium expired Saturday, adding another layer to the already complex issue. Scott said the good news is that FISH has partnered with the Department of Local Affairs and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which allows it to tap into federal and state dollars to help with rent assistance.
“Since we were able to do that we bulked up our staff so we have more advocates on staff working one-on-one with participants to make sure that they don’t get evicted because eviction prevention is a central key to the affordable housing crisis and to make sure the burgeoning homelessness issue doesn’t explode,” Scott said.
But the bad news, Scott added, is that there’s a large number of people who are not sure what they’re going to do.
“And if they’re pending eviction and their inability to pay isn’t due to COVID, they can’t tap into those additional funds. Those funds are solely for people who have financial hardship as a direct result of COVID,” Scott said.
Of the $1.3 million FISH has distributed for rent assistance about $1 million was from government funding. The other $300,000 was from FISH’s own funds, which can go toward any kind of emergency.
With no currently available affordable housing units in Broomfield, those who get evicted have nowhere locally to turn.
“And it’s not specific to Broomfield or the Denver metro region. It’s a nationwide problem, we’re not alone. … How are we going to address this issue of lots of people all at once falling off a cliff?” Scott rhetorically asked of the expiring moratorium.
Scott said it’s difficult to quantify the number of individuals in Broomfield on the brink of being evicted. Broomfield police and Health and Human Services have echoed that in recent City Council meetings, adding there’s no way to know how many people are experiencing homelessness in Broomfield at one point in time.
And while Broomfield FISH doesn’t have the answer to the affordable housing issue, it does what it can.
“We try and get creative and say, ‘Hey, if you come to FISH for groceries you can save this much on groceries’ of if we can get you utilities assistance through Energy Outreach Colorado, we can pay that bill and that’s one less thing you have to do,” Scott said. “We’re trying to get really creative with the budgeting. But for large families and even families significantly cost burdened with housing, there’s no good solution. It is very complicated.”
Crouse-Joo said the common stereotype she hears is that those who are unhoused or poor likely suffer from mental health issues or addiction.
“But really the contributing factor to instability in our community is the lack of affordable housing,” she said, later adding, “an important message for community members to know is that affordable housing isn’t one situation. … It’s a spectrum and we need different solutions for all the different problems.”
Scott added, “And the fact that it is so complicated is why people just kind of throw up their hands. It’s a hard narrative to talk about with the community. It’s not black and white, it’s not simplistic. You can’t do a little diagram and be like, a plus b equals c. That is not what this looks like at all. It looks like a giant formula that you would have to learn in calculus.”
While it’s unclear if this is the new normal of help needed from Broomfield FISH, Crouse-Joo said FISH is excited to see light at the end of the tunnel “in being able to stabilize as an organization and really be comfortable in addressing the new needs in our community.”
It’s no small feat, and one that couldn’t be possible without the help of dozens of community members, area nonprofits, the police department, city and county and local faith communities.
“Our community really knows how to step up and come together in times of crisis,” Scott said. “I feel incredibly blessed to live in Broomfield in the time of the pandemic and not anywhere else.”
For additional information on FISH or to sign up to volunteer, visit broomfieldfish.org.
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