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Demand at food pantries and soup kitchens continues to increase even as financial experts predict the economy is turning around. WNYC's Cindy Rodriguez visited a food program in Brooklyn and has this report.

REPORTER: St. John's Bread and Life serves mostly the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bed Stuy and Bushwick. Anthony Butler runs the programs and says demand at the soup kitchen, which serves many homeless adults, increased 19 percent while demand at the food pantry increased 50 percent:

BUTLER: With the downturn in the economy that's what hit the food pantry folks, because those were people formerly working or their social security isn't going as far as it did.

REPORTER: One of those struggling on a fixed income is Senior Citizen Sandra Evans. She lives at a nearby public housing development and says fees there keep increasing leaving her less money for food:

EVANS: Now they charge you for the washing machine, charge you for the air conditioner, so that takes away a little more but anyway I manage. I don't throw nothing away, whatever is left I always make some use of it.

REPORTER: Sitting nearby is Evans' cart full of rice, cereals, turkey and other items from the food pantry. St. John's Bread and Life served nearly 400,000 meals in fiscal year 2009, and Butler says he's expecting even larger numbers going into 2010. For WNYC, I'm Cindy Rodriguez.