Bonnie Brown must pay the same high gas prices other Muskogee residents do when she spends $40 a week filling the gas tank of her 1989 Oldsmobile.

She must budget for the same rising milk and bread prices other shoppers do when she uses food stamps to buy groceries for herself and her son, Thomas.

“The Department of Human Services gives me $50 (a month) in food stamps to feed two people,” the 44-year-old unemployed mother said.

Challenges Muskogee residents face with rising fuel, utility and food costs are magnified for the Browns and hundreds of other Muskogee residents living in poverty or on food stamps.

Muskogee charities say they’re seeing more people coming for help. For example, Amber Young, women’s director at the Gospel Rescue Mission, said the mission is feeding twice as many walk-in clients at its dinner than a year ago.

“We fed 12 people Friday, 22 people Thursday, 29 on Wednesday,” she said. “We cook for 35 people.”

Salvation Army case worker Angela Lott said the number of people seeking meals went from 20 to 40 a day, just over the summer.

“Our food bank had served 15 people a month, we did that number in the last two weeks,” she said. She said she had 15 applicants for utility assistance and 10 for rent assistance.

“There has always been a problem with poverty, but there has been a change of people,” said Sally Weiesnbach, director of the Ark of Faith charitable ministry. “Now it’s not just the homeless, not just the former inmates. It’s touching families in which both parents have to work to get by. Now, with everything going sky high in prices, they need help.”

Families need help even in a town that the Council for Community and Economic Research ranked as the sixth least expensive urban area in the United States.

Yet, a 2005 study by the Oklahoma Department of Commerce showed 26.3 percent of families in the Muskogee Public Schools District, and between 17 and 22 percent of Muskogee County families are living in poverty. The 2008 poverty level set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was $10,400 for a one-person household; $14,000 for two people; $21,000 for four; $28,400 for six.

The last U.S. Census report from 2000 showed 1,469 Muskogee families — 14.6 percent of the population — living below the poverty level. For families with children under age 18, the figure jumped to 22.3 percent.

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services reported 11,901 individuals in Muskogee County receiving food stamps. That’s 16.7 percent of the estimated county population of 71,018. Surrounding counties have an even higher percentage. For example, 19.8 percent of individuals in Adair County residents received food stamps.

George Earl Johnson Jr., communications director for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, said children constitute more than half of the Oklahomans receiving food stamps: 320,000 out of around 600,000 individuals for the fiscal year ending June 30.

Those on food stamps must use them to pay increasing food prices, Johnson said.