ROCHESTER — Leaders of a local food pantry are asking for the public’s help in finding a new home after financial issues and unsuccessful negotiations led their current landlord to serve them with an order to vacate.
Revolution Food Pantry must move out of Revolution Church by Feb. 4, according to the notice posted on the pantry’s door on Saturday. Due to the pantry’s limited budget, pantry director Betty Eaton said they’re growing increasingly desperate.
“Right now we're just in a sheer panic about where we're going to go,” Eaton said, adding her twice-a-week pantry served 802 families and a total of 2,415 people last year from the 87 Lowell St. church’s basement. “We have all these families. We don’t want to let them down.”
Revolution Church founded Revolution Food Pantry roughly 14 years ago. The pantry later broke off into its own entity several years ago to become a registered nonprofit so it could pursue grants and other funding, according to pantry and church officials.
Officials said the developments involving the pantry’s use of the church started last June when church leaders asked the pantry to begin paying 10 percent of its revenue as rent in order to help offset the utilities and other expenses incurred by the pantry’s operations.
Pastor Clif McKinley said that request was made because the nondenominational church suffered significant drops in church patronage, and therefore its primary income, in 2018.
“On the business side of it, we literally just do not have a choice,” said McKinley.
After the pantry paid rent as part of a six-month lease, both sides say negotiations failed in December after new proposed agreements called for higher rent or reduced pantry operations and other changes.
Eaton said the pantry can’t afford to pay more because its revenue is driven by donations and therefore not guaranteed.
She said they also can’t afford to cut down their operations — they’re open on Mondays from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and Thursdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. — because the demand for assistance has sharply increased from 363 families in 2016 to 603 in 2017 and 802 in 2018.
Part of that is attributed the rise in homelessness throughout the region. Eaton said Revolution Food Pantry doesn’t require individuals to prove their residency to obtain food, unlike other pantries and meal providers. She said that has led to more referrals to the pantry, in addition to bringing in more donations from entities that assist local homeless populations.
On the church’s side, McKinley said they determined they could no longer afford to cover the majority of the pantry’s bills because the church had to make some painful cuts in order to end 2018 “barely in the black.”
Those cuts included slashing McKinley’s salary by 80 percent, according to the pastor.
“We’ve literally cut everywhere we can cut,” he said. “We don’t have a whole lot of options.”
McKinley said it’s put the church in a challenging position because he said everyone there fully believes in the nonjudgmental, multifaceted assistance the pantry provides on top of providing a selection of fresh and healthy food.
“They give a great service to the community,” he said. “They treat people with dignity and respect, and they give generously.”
Like McKinley, Eaton said she doesn’t wish to paint the other side in a bad light. Instead, her focus now is finding a new location because both sides say it’s clear they won’t be able to come to terms.
Eaton said she’s been in conversation with a few organizations, included the Integrated Delivery Network. She said any potential partnerships were too preliminary to disclose.
“We will bloom wherever we’re planted,” said Eaton. “Hopefully, we can get a space where we can stay permanently, but I imagine we’ll probably get a temporary space to carry us through the winter.”
Eaton would love to use the opportunity to find a space in which they could open an additional day a week. She said they'd also love to start serving breakfast on Monday mornings because the area’s soup kitchens don’t serve breakfast.
Eaton, her husband and members of the pantry's volunteer board have been busy packing the pantry's food, winter clothing and various operational items over the past week.
Sheila Grandmaison, one of the pantry's board members who helped pack Wednesday after getting the pantry ready for its Thursday operations, said it has been a difficult process.
"Sometimes I feel pretty down and out," said Grandmaison, who used to receive assistance at the pantry. "This is the only place some people have to come."
When asked whether the church's financial struggles could mean it is in danger of closing, McKinley said, "We'll hang on and keep doing what we're doing as long as people show up and we can afford to keep the lights on."
When asked if the church was reaching out to the public for help or new members, McKinley said it's the church's responsibility to take care of its operations and to provide for the community, not for the general, non-patron public to provide for the church.
"It would be silly to go to the community to fund us," he said, outlining the church's goal as spreading the gospel and providing spiritual guidance to area residents.
