Hundreds of people begin lining up before 10 a.m. every Friday to receive food distributed at a Rich Township pantry in Richton Park.
Workers and volunteers spend about five hours every week loading boxes and bags of food into vehicles. The pantry serves about 900 people per week.
“We’re the last resort,” township Supervisor Calvin Jordan said.
The scene is repeated at other township-run pantries throughout the south suburbs. Wages have not kept up with inflation as many try to keep pace with costs of groceries, gas, housing and other needs. Some on fixed incomes often must choose between buying medicine and buying food.
“They really do need help,” said Therese Goodrich, a longtime township trustee and former village trustee in Park Forest. “Sometimes it’s just a little bit to get them through the month. Their pantries are bare.”
Households struggle to make ends meet. Many parents work multiple minimum wage jobs. Retirees seek help to meet monthly expenses.
“People are having tough times,” Jordan said.
Providing general assistance to the poor is one of three services that state law requires townships provide. The other two are assessing property and maintaining roads that are not under other local, state or federal jurisdiction. Townships maintain more than 71,000 miles of roads throughout the state, or 53% of all thoroughfares, according to Township Officials of Illinois.
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Township government often gets a bad rap. Advocates for consolidating the nearly 8,000 units of government in Illinois usually cite townships as Exhibit A, or prime contenders for elimination. Critics call townships wasteful and inefficient havens for corruption and patronage.
Officials in Rich Township shrug off such criticism. They’re focused on helping as many people as they can as efficiently as possible.
“There are a lot of families that need assistance,” Jordan said. “We let them know they don’t need to feel ashamed about it.”
Township food pantries are a safety net. They are the result of society seeing people starving and saying, “We can do better.” They are like a hand up, not a hand out.
“Somebody needs to listen to them and solve problems with them, not for them,” Goodrich said. “When people can help themselves it helps their dignity.”
Townships are like government’s best kept secret, Jordan said. Not many are aware of the services they provide or the sheer number of needy residents they serve week in and week out.
Take Friday’s food pantry distribution, for example. The five-hour operation involved complex logistics as an army of workers and volunteers served a steady stream of clients. Organizers have streamlined operations so well that people passing the township administration center off Governors Highway might not have even noticed the work taking place.
Authorities staged vehicles along side streets near the township buildings so traffic did not back up along busy Governors Highway. Vehicles formed two lines in the township parking lot.
The dual lines crept forward as five vehicles per line were waved inside a township garage. The overhead doors closed to keep out the cold and drivers cut their engines while people loaded food into back seats and trunks.
“We have a good system,” Jordan said.
Some regular food pantry clients are unable or reluctant to leave their homes during snow events or other inclement weather. The township delivers provisions to senior citizens, people with disabilities and others who are unable to get to the pantry.
“There are a lot of retirees,” Jordan said.
Many senior citizens live alone and value opportunities to socialize with others.
“When people get older they want to engage,” Jordan said.
Rich is one of 30 townships in Cook County. Rich Township serves people from 10 communities: Country Club Hills, Flossmoor, Hazel Crest, Homewood, Matteson, Olympia Fields, Park Forest, Richton Park, Tinley Park and University Park.
Jordan was elected supervisor in 2021 after serving 20 years as the township’s highway commissioner. He previously worked for Cook County as a budget analyst and as an assistant to the late John Stroger, former Cook County Board president.
Jordan, like Stroger, was raised in Arkansas and got involved in community service, government and politics as a young man.
“I grew up in an environment where we helped other people,” Jordan said.
The region known as the Southland consists of about a million people living in more than 60 different municipalities. Some have larger populations than others, but none has much clout on its own.
Jordan believes getting different units of government to work together and pull in the same direction benefits the entire region.
“In the Southland you have too many people working by themselves,” he said.
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.
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