Hunger Banquet Upcoming

To the Editors:

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Out of Reach 2001 report, a worker earning the minimum wage ($5.15 per hour) must work 88 hours per week in order to afford a two-bedroom unit at the area’s Fair Market rent. A minimum wage earner can afford monthly rent of no more than $268, coming $323 short of the cost of a two-bedroom home.
When people are forced to spend their income on housing, other necessities are often overlooked. 13 percent of food assistance recipients at Amherst’s Second Harvest Food Bank say their needs would be met if they had affordable housing. In order to educate the campus about hunger and poverty issues in Ohio and throughout the world, Ohio PIRG’s Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness is hosting the Hunger Banquet on Thursday, Oct. 11 at 6:30 p.m. in Starlight Lounge, North Hall. The Hunger Banquet is a dramatization of the unequal distribution of resources in the world. Participants are randomly assigned to a high-, middle-, or low-income group and served accordingly.
Before the meal, Allison Gould, head of circulation at the library and a partner of RESULTS will be speaking. RESULTS is a nonprofit, grassroots citizens’ lobby working to create the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty. By identifying sustainable solutions to the problems of hunger and poverty and generating the resources necessary to make them succeed.
Participants will also have the opportunity to write letters to Senator DeWine, asking him to co-sponsor the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act. The bill (S.1248) would provide an additional 1.5 million units of affordable housing nationwide over the next ten years using surplus from the Federal Housing Association and the Ginnie-May Fund. All are invited to attend the Banquet and take part in the discussion and reflection afterwards. Reservations are encouraged, but not required. Email opirg@oberlin.edu or call x8137 for more information or to attend.

–Jennifer Poore
College junior
OPIRG