With just a week left until Thanksgiving, Mecklenburg County's network of food pantries is facing a crisis of too many hungry people and not enough food.

Empty shelves abound at Loaves & Fishes, with the food stock down by 50 percent compared to last year. Meanwhile, the agency saw a 24 percent jump in clients last month, feeding 2,000 people more than it fed in October 2010.

Adding to the anxiety: The week of Thanksgiving is typically the busiest week of the year for the agency's 19 pantries.

A Thanksgiving food drive has been launched to try and restock shelves in time for the crush of holiday clients.

But agency officials admit there is a definite problem with "donor fatigue," along with the fact that some past donors to the agency are now among the unemployed.

Beverly Howard, executive director of Loaves & Fishes, says she keeps a letter from one such former donor in the top drawer of her desk to remind her why things have gotten so tough.

"We are not going to close any pantries, but we are facing the greatest challenge of our 36 years of distributing food," Howard said.

"We spent $35,000 to buy food for our pantries nine days ago, because we didn't have food. That's the most we've ever spent for one week's food."

Of that $35,000, nearly $9,000 went for powdered milk, which is highly sought by clients because it's expensive, nutritious and typically in short supply. "Powdered milk is powdered gold," Howard said.

Loaves & Fishes is the largest system of food pantries in the state. Last year, the agency fed 110,336 people, including more than 53,000 children.

The agency stocks its shelves chiefly with donated food, often collected through food drives hosted by congregations, schools, scout troops and businesses. When the donated food runs out, the agency uses donated cash to buy from local grocery stores.

The 19 pantries spread throughout the county provide clients with a week's worth of groceries at no cost.

In years past, the agency helped mostly the working poor: people who had jobs but didn't earn enough money to pay all their bills.

However, results of an annual survey conducted by Loaves & Fishes shows that has changed.

Most clients this year are without jobs, and nearly 60 percent haven't worked in at least a year, according to the survey results released Wednesday.

Even more surprising, Howard said, was a new survey question that discovered 64 percent of the clients were "doubled up," either living with others or others living with them.

"This tells me people are increasingly unable to provide private shelter for their families," Howard said. "If they are not able to even pay rent on a basic apartment, they certainly don't have resources to buy nutritious food."

Many of them are being forced to make a choice between buying food, and paying rent, utility bills and medical bills, Howard said.

Families typically find their way to the agency through referrals from 900 area congregations, charities and schools.

Sarah Lofton, the pantry coordinator at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church on Park Road, said the increase in clients has meant some items simply aren't on the shelves.

"We just have to tell people: 'We're sorry, but we don't have that product today,' and that's hard to do," Lofton said.

"In just two hours this morning, we served about 80 people, and an awful lot of them are families with children. And we had one person today who spoke only Russian, which makes communicating a challenge."