KNIGHTDALE — Martha Morales cleaned houses for a living, but there’s no more work because her customers can’t afford to pay her.

“I need a job, no?,” said Morales. “Looking, looking.”

She has five children and one grandchild to support.

Morales was one of about 100 people standing in line Thursday for food at Community Helpers, a Knightdale food distribution center for 10 years.

But hard times have hit the agency too, said Billy Neal, its president. He doesn’t have enough money to pay rent and utilities on the building at 111B N. First Avenue.

And Community Helpers’ shelves are bare. There’s not enough overflow food from the donations of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, the Interfaith Food Shelter and five area grocery stores to help people in between the agency’s two primary distribution days.

And without help, people like Margarita Arrllano will suffer.

Three months ago, Arrllano’s job at a recycling center in Raleigh was cut.

“They said they didn’t have enough to pay the employees,” she recalled.

“It’s tough,” said Saydel Blado. “It’s hard to get a job right now.”

Until the economy tanked, Blado remodeled homes with his friend Antonio Lopez, who was also waiting in line for food last week. While the Wake County’s unemployment rate, at 6.1 percent, is better than the nation’s at 7.1 percent, these people put a face on the statistics.

Community Helpers volunteer Joe Crumel, a former detention and corrections officer who pastors at Knightdale’s Peace and

Deliverance Holiness Church in his retirement, also gives away food from his home on Saturdays.

Five years ago, about 20 people would gather there. Last Saturday, he saw about 100 people, he said.

“I see people from all walks of life,” he said. “Some even have their master’s degrees.

“It gives you a good feeling inside to help people,” said Crumel, whose wife Edna serves as Community Helpers’ executive secretary.

None of the people running Community Helpers draw salaries, said Neal. It is operated by about eight members of the Neal family, who started it to honor Neal’s father, Leroy Neal.

Leroy Neal, who used a pick and shovel to dig wells for a living, dug wells for free for people in rural Wake County who couldn’t afford them, Neal said.

“He had this saying, ‘Lend a hand to the other man because you don’t know when you’ll need a hand.’”

And the family took up his mantle so well that last year they were honored by the food bank for distributing the most food of any agency in Wake County — all 343,044 pounds of it.

A cadre of dedicated volunteers work the site, pick up food from groceries and deliver food to who people who aren’t physically able to come to Community Helpers on Wednesday and every other Thursday when the food bank truck arrives.

Each week, volunteer Edward Blount works a 10-hour shift at Nomacorc in Zebulon before helping give away food at Community Helpers.

Blount also picks up food at area groceries and delivers them to his church, Beaver’s Creek Chapel in Zebulon.

“I like doing it,” he said. “You meet different people helping people.”

Standing in line to get food Thursday, Stephanie Garcia was thankful for people like Blount. And she is bracing for more hard times.

“It’s going to get worse because there are going to be more people without jobs,” she said.