Activity in, around the Hudson River
A person rides a jet ski southbound on the Hudson River past the Corning Preserve on Thursday in Albany. At right, a man rides a bicycle along the Mohawk-hudson Bike Trail at the Corning Preserve as a train traverses a bridge across the Hudson. The forecast calls for more clouds to start the weekend on Friday but sunny and cooler with highs in the 50s on Saturday and Sunday.
By Steve Hughes
Albany County is seeing an unprecedented increase in the number of residents looking for help getting food, a surge local officials blame on the coronavirus and the subsequent loss of jobs caused by the shutdown to stop its spread.
Applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, rose from 974 in August 2019 to 1,322 this year, County Executive Dan Mccoy said Thursday.
The trend appears to be getting worse this month. In the first week of September, the county had 820 applications for SNAP benefits, compared to 135 in
2019. In total, there were 926 applica- tions last September.
“The issue of food insecurity really has become more widespread as we’ve been shutdown,” he said. “These number’s we’ve never seen in my eight years as county executive.”
SNAP applications at the beginning of 2020 were already up over 2019, according to county figures. The county had 1,670 applications through the first two months of 2019, compared to 1,900 in 2020. But the number of applicants shot up to 1,328 in March, followed by 1,645 applications in April.
The end of extra federal unemployment aid and the continuing restrictions on local businesses are the likely culprits behind the increase, Mccoy said.