ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- To the working poor looking in on a booming economy from the outside, housing and fuel prices have exploded and health care, prescription drug and car repair costs aren't far behind.

That's leaving precious little for food budgets this holiday season, almost five years into the welfare reform act's efforts to move people off welfare and into jobs.

"A lot of the people that eat here have jobs," said chef Joe Cailteux, cooking up ham, noodle casserole and green beans at Albuquerque's Salvation Army kitchen. "As a matter of fact, we have scheduled the hours that we feed here in order to feed the people who do attempt to work."

A year ago, the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that demand for emergency food assistance grew 18 percent over 1998 in 26 cities. On Thursday, they plan an update on hunger and homelessness.

A U.S. Agriculture Department study last year found 10 million families, or 9.7 percent of U.S. households, had inadequate access to food in 1996-98. New Mexico topped the list at 15.1 percent.

"It does become a choice between do I take my child to the doctor, pay my utility bill or go to the grocery store and buy food?" said Cindy Cerf, spokeswoman for St. Mary's Food Bank in Phoenix, which distributes 30 million pounds of food a year, mostly to 900 relief agencies in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas.

"These aren't people who are depending on welfare," she said. "It's just that they're at the low end of the pay scale."

Also suffering are people whose jobs don't include health benefits, said Sister Paulette LoMonaco, executive director of Good Shepherd Services in New York City.

"Their salaries aren't sufficient to provide benefits or a living wage, so when a small problem comes up, it becomes a catastrophe," she said.

Single mother Margaret Trujillo of Albuquerque earns $60 a week from baby-sitting and gets $120 a month in food stamps. She says rising fuel prices mean she can't pay her bills, so she turned to a food pantry to make sure she and her 3-year-old son have enough to eat.

"My mom's not going to say get out, you know, but I need to pay her," she said.

Soaring demand, low inventories and expected colder weather will keep natural gas and heating-oil prices high through the winter, government and industry economists said Tuesday. The Energy Department estimated heating bills for natural gas consumers would be 50 percent higher this winter than last.

Rents have skyrocketed so much in 38 metropolitan areas that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development broadened its rent-subsidy program this month.

Still, some people aren't getting help that they could. Food stamp rolls dropped 28 percent after welfare reform, according to the General Accounting Office.

Doug O'Brien of Chicago-based America's Second Harvest, a food bank umbrella group, says many people leaving welfare were never told they remained eligible for food stamps or found it hard to get them.

Said Agriculture Undersecretary Shirley Watkins, who supervises the food stamp program: "I think there was a lot of misinformation."

So people turn to food banks. The Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque distributed 10 million pounds of food statewide this year -- double the amount since last year, said director Melody Wattenbarger.

"The flaw in that is we can't do it -- we were designed to be emergency food suppliers. There's really not enough food to do that," she said.

New Mexico plans a massive outreach program in the next six months to alert people eligible for food stamps.

The prevailing glow of affluence also can make helping the needy trickier: "It's a little harder to convince people there's a whole group of people who have been left behind by that prosperity," Wattenbarger said

Fred Grandy, recently retired as president of Goodwill Industries, says welfare reform was a turning point for that organization. Last year, he said, Goodwill served 373,000 people _ three times the number for 1995.

"It's a work in progress," he said. "Replacing welfare with work is a good idea, but it is a long-term strategy, not a short-term fix."

http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/12/13/still.hungry.ap/index.html

-- Black Adder (dark@places.com), December 13, 2000