Mid City Concerns couldn’t have run into funding difficulties at a worse time.

Winter is coming on, the economy is in shambles, and state and federal dollars are more squeezed than ever. And now, mainly because of belt-tightening and budget confusion, Mid City must reduce the frequency of meals it serves each week at nine locations in Spokane County. What’s been a five-day-a-week service could be trimmed to as few as two days, depending on how vigorously providers scramble to close a $30,000 gap and how much support they get from the public.

The difficult situation is reminiscent of the low-income housing difficulties that have plagued Spokane the past couple of years as affordable residential facilities were converted to market-rate condos and apartments or commercial space. Only through the concerted effort of governmental and nonprofit entities have displaced needy been relocated to other shelter.

It has long been clear that government at any level can meet only a portion of the basic needs that elude the poor. And Spokane’s demographics reveal a substantial number of poor. Yet many of us are unaware of the critical role played by nonprofit organizations that dedicate themselves to those challenges.

Tax dollars are an essential part of the solution, to be sure, but making those funds stretch as far as possible requires partnerships with private nonprofit organizations that often are the agencies that coordinate and carry out the delivery of publicly funded services.

The city of Spokane, for example, just put out the call for social service agencies to act as warming centers for the homeless this winter. That kind of collaboration spares the city from having to use limited funds to build and maintain facilities for an activity that occurs only a couple of months a year.

The demand for social services will always exceed available resources, of course, and the gap is more likely to widen than narrow. The population is aging and many senior citizens have a difficult time making their fixed incomes go as far as necessary. To those people, agencies such as Mid City Concerns, which provide occasional meals and a comfortable place to congregate out of the cold, may be all that wards off despair.

Yet the ranks of the needy will grow if retirement funds of the soon-to-retire become casualties of the stock market’s plunging performance – not to mention victims of joblessness and other side effects of economic decline.

No matter who undertakes the task of providing for those without adequate resources, it will be demanding, but citizens who care owe the nonprofits their encouragement and support.

We have no simple answer, but we salute the nonprofits who voluntarily bear so much of the load.