Harvest Hope is one of many groups helping Richland County assist Allen Benedict Residents

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO)–  Harvest Hope is known for stepping up whenever there is a crisis and between Hurricane Florence, furloughed federal employees and now the Allen Benedict Court crisis, Harvest Hope is running low for this time of year. Richland County pledged $150,000 dollars to help those affected by the Allen Benedict Court crisis.

Harvest Hope says they plan on helping the Columbia Housing Authority go through all the donations they have received so they have a complete inventory, and know exactly what they will need to ask for.

“We do this on a daily basis. If you’ve never done a pantry like this before, it can be very overwhelming,” Mary Louise Resch said, with Harvest Hope. 

Harvest Hope is still sending up to 3 loads to the Pee-Dee area every week because of Hurricane Florence. That on top of normal food bank operations and they are scheduling additional distributions for Federal Employees if the government shuts down again onFridayy. They say they don’t foresee a slowdown in disasters any time soon.  

“We take it one disaster at a time. And we consider Allen Benedict Court, the Federal shutdown, and hurricane Florence all disasters,” Resch, said. 

According to Harvest Hope, the community has stepped up and donated but a lot of the items the Columbia Housing Authority has received are things they don’t really need– like clothing. They say people should go on their website to find the list of the desperately needed items.  

“Until enough affordable housing becomes available to find a permanent home for these folks, we’re still going to have some of these issues,” Resch said.

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