OUR COMMUNITY
A volunteer delivers food to a family’s home in Pontiac. Lighthouse’s Thanksgiving food distribution provided food boxes to 2,000 families.
Lighthouse Pivots, Expands Efforts During Pandemic
The need for emergency food and emergency shelter services has increased dramatically. DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER
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ocal nonprofit Lighthouse, which helps the fight against homelessness and poverty in the community by providing food, shelter, transitional housing, affordable housing developments and other services, has pivoted and expanded to accommodate the increase in the local community’s needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the pandemic, emergency food distribution shifted from being supplemental to
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being entirely essential, not only needing to provide to more families, but also providing them with everything they need all at once in a safe, no-contact manner. “That meant home delivery for some people, working with a broad base of volunteers to coordinate delivery of food boxes to households across the county,” said Ryan Hertz, the Jewish president and CEO of Lighthouse. “It also meant expanding the num-
ber of sites where we distribute food and partnering with other pantries to distribute our food boxes through them.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, Lighthouse’s emergency food efforts have increased tremendously, from serving about 300-500 households a week to around 5,000 a week. Before the pandemic, Lighthouse provided emergency shelter out of churches and synagogues with guests moving week-to-week to different congregations to provide those services. That immediately became unsafe, and the agency realized it needed to pivot. The emergency shelter program moved to hotel rooms to keep clients, volunteers and
partners safe. Shelters became unsafe due to potential COVID exposure. Through Lighthouse’s crowdfunding platform, HandUp, a campaign was created to raise $25,000 for unanticipated costs associated with moving its shelter into another format. United Way for Southeast Michigan committed $50,000 to try and push the campaign’s goal to $100,000. Several other groups then provided a match as well. Between governmental, corporate and foundation support, plus individual donations, the campaign raised about $3 million by the end of 2020. “All of that funding went to purchasing food wholesale and for our food distribution work,
