Hunger’s new pain

New York is, without a doubt, a great place. But it is also a city of contradictions where dire poverty is as much part of the urban landscape as immense wealth.

Despite all its riches, there are thousands of low-wage workers who barely scrape out a living and 1.5 million people — most of them women, children, seniors, the working poor and people with disabilities — forced to rely on soup kitchens and food pantries to put food on the table.

For them, the city is not so great.

Since 2003, the number of New Yorkers who have trouble affording food for themselves and their families has increased 60% to a whopping 2.9 million.

“In New York, one of the richest cities in the world, food poverty is around every corner,” said Magarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York, the largest in the country.

“You don’t have to walk far to find poverty in the city, and poverty, of course, is the cause of hunger.”

The high cost of living, the stubborn unemployment rate, the poverty wages, all of them contribute to dramatically increasing the number of people in need of emergency food assistance, Purvis said.

Yet, just last year, food pantries and soup kitchens across the five boroughs lost 11 million meals due to federal cuts in the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), Purvis said. This means 40% less food available to low-income New Yorkers at a time when demand keeps growing by leaps and bounds.

Bad as the situation is now, it could get much worse very soon.

Hard as it may be to believe, some people in Washington are intent on depriving 46 million people in the country of their lifeline to keep food on the table. More than 1.8 million people in the city would suffer.

Congress is threatening to cut billions of dollars from the Food Stamp program in the Farm Bill over the next 10 years. It has been proposed to reduce benefits and limit the number of people eligible, says the Food Bank. But cutting food stamps would exacerbate the need that food pantries and soup kitchens are already struggling to fill.

“This program is the single most-important investment we have in the fight to end hunger,” Purvis said. “If these cuts happen, they would turn the whole system upside down. It would mean cutting in half our safety net against hunger. New Yorkers need to understand the seriousness of this situation.”

In addition to these cuts, if the current drought drives up the cost of food, low-income families will have an even harder time putting food on the table, and soup kitchens and food pantries will be stretched even more, says the Food Bank.

Already, many of the kitchens and pantries across the city have been forced to reduce their hours and days of operations or to cut down the amount of protein they distribute in favor of less-expensive foods like starches and grains.

“You cannot have a strong city when so many of society’s most vulnerable — seniors, mothers, children — are struggling with poverty,” said Purvis. “Take action, donate, get involved in your neighborhood with your church or community group.”

There is urgency in Purvis’ voice when she asks New Yorkers to go to the Food Bank website (foodbanknyc.org) and send emails to their elected officials, telling them not to slash the hunger safety net. There are form lettters available on the website.

“Don’t wait,” Purvis said. “Make hunger in New York City a priority for you.”