$TARVING THE CITY
Shutdown poised to cause ‘full-blown crisis’ for 1.6M N.Y.ers who use food stamps – Blaz
More than 1.5 million New Yorkers who depend on food stamps will go hungry if the federal shutdown stretches to March 1, Mayor de Blasio warned on Thursday.
“We are entering nothing less than a full-blown crisis that is about to have massive effects on the people of New York City,” de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference. “And it is a crisis with no end in sight. It is a crisis that will get worse and worse with each passing month.”
Speaking 27 days into the shutdown, de Blasio said the worst effects of it were 44 days away — when, on March 1, the city would begin losing $500 million a month in direct federal funding for programs including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, better known as food stamps.
The city will also face the loss of funding for Section 8 funding to the New York City Housing Authority and money for the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, on March 1. In April, the city would face the loss of funding for school lunches and breakfast, de Blasio said.
“This for 1.6 million New Yorkers will come in the form of the loss of the support they receive so they can get food for their families — so children can have nutritious food, so seniors can have enough to eat,” de Blasio said, referring to the number of city residents receiving SNAP.
Hizzoner said he was sounding the alarm more than a month in advance in part due to a quirk in how families will receive their February benefits — many of them will receive February’s assistance this week, in the form of a larger than usual check.
“For any food stamp recipients who think they’ve gotten an unusually large check, that is because that is the last check you will see until the shutdown is over,” de Blasio said. “So people who have gotten those larger checks, those double checks, have to shepherd their resources as best they can.”
Human Resources Commissioner Steve Banks explained that under U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, states were able to authorize early payments of benefits for the month of February — as long as they were paid out before January 20, which is approximately 30 days after the shutdown began.
The city’s social services department was able to process early benefits for about 94% of its caseload, he said, and the rest will be able to get them
through reserve funding.
Banks said the department was working to make clear to clients that they would not receive another payment in February.
“It is a complicated message for people living on the edge to receive this message from government, but the state and the city worked together to take full use of the early payment option that the USDA has given us to make sure that we provide as much benefits as possible,” Banks said.
While the city would work to help people with additional resources if the shutdown does stretch until March, de Blasio said New York simply could not afford to cover the full cost of SNAP and other benefits at risk.
“At the kind of level we’re talking about here, even the resources of a city as big as New York City will be quickly exhausted,” de Blasio said, noting that paying for the program would wipe out the city’s reserves. “Literally in the course of a few months we would run out of any money that we have to address this crisis.”
The news was unsettling for Eugenie Fransois, 60, of Crown Heights, who is ill and depends on food stamps to help her get by.
“What are people gonna do? What will happen to us? Is this the end? Is death coming for all of us?” Fransois asked.
“This is going too far. What do they think we’re gonna do? Are they gonna let us starve to death?” she continued, her eyes getting wet with tears.
Fransois was born in Haiti, but has long been a U.S. citizen.
A mother of six, three of her children still live with her, she said.
“This is the United States of America! They can’t do that to us,” she said.
Dianedra Nunes, 30, of Flatbush, is a mother of three who works but still relies on SNAP to help feed her family. She was optimistic for her own family because she works, but said things would be harder for the elderly or disabled.
“They have to find a Plan B. How long are they gonna let people be stranded for? They have to find a solution,” she said.
Alexander Rapaport, executive director of the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network, said city food pantries like his are already feeling the effects of the shutdown — with the arrival of outof-work federal employees who missed their first paychecks this month.
“It takes a lot of time for a person that receives a regular paycheck to become psychologically at peace to come for charity handouts — but we are already seeing this week a trickle of federal employees, new faces, and people who saw our outreach material, coming in. So this means it is hitting people fast,” he said.
Rapaport said that even before SNAP recipients wind up in need come March, unpaid federal workers would likely already have added to strain on charities.
“They will be going to food pantries, and they alone could overwhelm entire emergency food system in New York City,” he said.