LiftUp of Routt County’s Sue Fegelein understands the challenges of inflation as food expenses continue to climb along with the number of people seeking services and the amount of food being distributed through the food bank.

She also understands how it impacts the people she serves.

“We haven’t had to turn anyone away for lack of funding,” Fegelein said Thursday. “We are budgeting right now for next year, and it’s such a question mark. It’s hard to predict what we need, so at the very least, we are going to budget what we budgeted this year. Then we’re taking the actual numbers into account to see where we need to increase our budgets, particularly for housing and utility assistance — which was huge this year — and then food, honestly.”

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Fegelein shares her concerns with other members of the Routt County Food Security Watchdogs, a group that includes LiftUp, Routt County Human Services, United Way of the Yampa Valley, The Health Partnership, Routt County Council on Aging, Heart of Steamboat United Methodist Church, Routt County Public Health, Northwest Colorado Health, Integrated Community and the Yampa Valley Community Foundation.

The group comes together every other month to discuss how to solve food security gaps in Routt County and work to communicate low-cost food options to residents.

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One of those options is LiftUp of Routt County, which has food banks in Steamboat Springs. Fegelein, who serves as the executive director, said she sees the results of rising rents, utilities, gas and food on a daily basis.

“This is the most need that I’ve seen,” Fegelein said. “We were budgeting $88,000 in 2019 for housing assistance and this year it’s over $200,000. That was not that long ago for that big of jump, and it just hasn’t gone down since COVID.”

Fegelein is not alone, and many other organizations across Routt County are also seeing a demand for increased services for everything from food and help with rent to helping folks who are without a roof over their head to those seeking dental care.

LiftUp has seen a 118% increase in those seeking emergency financial assistant, a 28% increase in food being distributed, a 12% increase in the children served by Rocket Pack program and a 54% increase in USDA food programs.

Additionally, there has been a 56 % increase in community support expenses — this includes housing assistance — and a 70% increase in food purchase expenses. Fegelein said LiftUp has been able to absorb most of the costs for the rising demand.

“We’re heavily reliant on grants and donations, and so we’ve been very fortunate with donors and grantors who stepped up,” Fegelein said. “I do most of our grant writing, and I’m constantly looking for new grants, then getting creative about reaching out to places I haven’t reached out to before.”

She said business at the LiftUp of Routt County thrift store has also been strong, which helps support the food bank and programs that offer support to community members in need.

“We have tried to diversify what we’re selling in there, and now we are selling stuff we didn’t used to sell like small furniture and things like that,” Fegelein said. “That’s really helping on the income side of things where we really have a three-prong approach of thrift store sales, donations and grants.”

Fegelein said the current economic climate has turned what used to be a seasonal demand for assistance to a more consistent need, and as a result, it has forced organizations like LiftUp to find more creative approaches to fundraising.

She encourages people to have food drives and to donate, which is the best way to support LiftUp because the nonprofit can make cash donations go further by purchasing food at a discounted price from Food Bank of the Rockies.

“We have a monthly donor giving program, and we just started a business monthly giving program so businesses can give a certain amount per month,” Fegelein said. “We’re trying to find creative ways to get sustainable funding since what we’re seeing now is much more year-round than it used to be. It’s not just the holidays anymore.”

Kate Nowak, executive director of United Way of the Yampa Valley, also has community members coming to her looking for help.

“I think if everybody’s food costs are going up and if you are struggling to make ends meet, you have to make choices — ‘Am I’m going to buy extra $50 worth of food or am I going to spend that $50 on a bill for my electric, or gas or a tank of gas in my car?'” Nowak said. “So I think that is one of the reasons why the LiftUp food bank has seen such an increase. People are trying to supplement a little bit of their food budget with with the food bank so they have money for other things.”

She said the Food Security Watchdog group is a collaborative effort representing different organizations in Routt County.

“It’s really anybody who’s concerned about food insecurity, and we have a really nice, broad collaboration group,” Nowak said. “I think it was March where the SNAP benefits got pulled back from COVID, so we really wanted to put out as some kind of a newsletter or news flyer to the community to say, ‘Here’s where all the places you can find food and who is offering what services around food. That is something that doesn’t happen with just one or two organizations. It really takes a community effort.”