Tough economic times can make a hot meal a luxury.

Thanksgiving is a day for families to sit down and eat together, but these days there are many families without a place to sleep, or food to eat, and some local people facing those circumstances were very thankful for the Sulzbacher Center.

On Thanksgiving Day, the Sulzbacher center provided meals for upwards of 700 people, many of them entire families in which someone lost their job.

Sulzbacher chief operating officer, Gregory Watts, said homeless families are the fastest growing population here.

Video:

He said he's watched the number of people they feed daily grow over the past few years from 1,100 to 1,300, and the number will likely grow. He said it's not uncommon for people to ask for meals to go.

"They take the three or four meals, they go back in their car and they drive home," he said. "That tells us that they've got people out there on the verge of becoming homeless."

Marci Acala and her four children are one of the Sulzbacher's families. It's their first Thanksgiving without a home. This past year she and her husband lost their jobs.

"I was staying with my mother because we lost our home and we stayed there, until she became ill," Acala said.

She returned to Jacksonville hopeful that her husband had found a place to stay. He didn't and she ended up here.

Today she was thankful for having a place to stay with her kids.

The center realized that they would feed many families like Marci's. And they're doing their best to make the meal special.

"We have 400 pounds of turkey and 300 pounds of fresh sweet potatoes."

The Sulzbacher chefs had been working for four days on the meal.

"We're doing roasted turkey, cranberry sauce we made from scratch, sweet potatoes, green been casserole, dressing, gravy all from scratch," Sulzbacher chef Kevin Nacky said.

So when these families break bread, they'll have linens and plates. They'll be served. It'll be an uplifting moment for those down on their luck.

The Sulzbacher center is the only place in the area that keeps families together, and right now they're at capacity, with 340 families. The center is looking to increase that to 362 families.