Mike Goldberg and Therese Prokop, volunteers at the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, prepare to pack boxes with cans to be distributed to food pantries around the state.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- His phone has been shut off for non-payment. The utility company is threatening to turn off the heat and lights. And he’s fallen behind on his property taxes.

Hank Forrest, 69, of Johnston, used to think he’d go fishing and travel when he retired from a life working in restaurants.

“Now, I start worrying about food, about going to the mailbox” and seeing still more bills, he said. “I worry about who is going to take me to the food pantry.”

He’s one of a growing number who are turning to Rhode Island food pantries and other social-service agencies for help. On Friday, he was at the Blessed Sacrament Food Pantry in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood, where two of the pantry volunteers had brought him.

“It’s embarrassing, really,” Forrest said. “Because I never thought it would come to this.”

Agencies that get food from the Rhode Island Community Food Bank network report they are helping 26 percent more people than a year ago. The same goes for food stamps — the state Department of Human Services says users in October were up 24 percent over the same month in 2008.

Officials point to the economy and Rhode Island’s skyrocketing unemployment rate — most recently reported at 13 percent — as the big reasons for the increase.

“At this time last year, the need for food assistance began climbing as the recession began its grip on our state,” Andrew Schiff, the food bank’s chief executive officer, said in a news release as the group launched its annual holiday meal drive. “Twelve months later, the need continues to increase.”

But, while a year ago people were bombarded by news of mass layoffs, government intervention and foreclosures, this year “there are signs that things are getting better,” said Lisa Roth Blackman, the food bank’s chief philanthropy officer. “We just need people to understand that for the people on the bottom, things are not getting better.”

To meet that growing demand, the food bank is hoping to collect 250,000 pounds of food as part of its holiday meal drive, which runs through the end of the year. In 2008, the food drive collected some 300,000 pounds of food, Blackman said. (This year’s goal doesn’t represent the need, Blackman said; it’s an attempt to set a realistic goal, which they hope to exceed.)

Meanwhile, the state’s food-stamp caseload is growing dramatically, with the average number of applications jumping in the last year from about 900 a month to some 3,000, said Donalda Carlson, associate director of economic support services for the Department of Human Services.

It’s a “significant spike,” Carlson said — it was “most notable after the beginning of December,” and hasn’t let up.

She added: “I have not seen a plateau yet.”

The department responded to the growing demand “with an all-out effort,” Carlson said, despite the state’s budget woes, which have led to unfilled vacancies. It has used its six field offices to reach out to potential clients, she said, while “looking for all streamlining and efficiencies, without compromising the integrity of the program.”

The application process was simplified and outreach efforts increased, targeting particularly the elderly and the unemployed. For example, Carlson said, applicants can now access the food-stamp application from the Department of Labor and Training Web site, www.dlt.ri.gov. Overtime work, she said, was also approved for workers to keep up with the caseload.

Forrest, who said he lives on about $840 a month in Social Security and an additional $118 in food stamps, said he has cut food expenses to pay his utilities and taxes.

Growing up on the south side of Providence in a large family, Forrest said, “We would have beans every night, and I thought that was the norm. When you are poor, everybody around you was poor, so you didn’t know the difference.

“But I’m going back now [to that life] at 70 years old. I never thought.  …”