Report: Nearly One in Six N.Y.C. Residents Can’t Afford Food

NEW YORK (AP) - The number of New Yorkers unable to feed their families and relying on food from charities is rising, according to a report released yesterday by an advocacy group.
Nearly one in six city residents lived in households that could not afford to buy enough food during the three-year period ending in 2005, according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.
These households included 15.4 percent of city residents — up from 14.0 percent between 2000 and 2003 — according to the report, which was based in part on figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“As this report shows, in the richest, most powerful city in the world, we can and must do more to help New Yorkers access healthy food,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who joined officials from the coalition at a Bronx food pantry to discuss the report.
On Monday Congressman Jerrold Nadler visited the Masbia Kosher Soup Kitchen in Borough Park to discuss poverty in the community. He also helped serve the evening’s patrons.
Nadler said that when he was an assemblyman in 1979, Mayor Ed Kotch created a poverty board, with several thousand dollars that went to the poor.
“It struck me then that nothing went to Jewish groups,” Nadler said, “that nobody knew that there was such a thing as Jewish poverty; nobody talked about it. And I insisted that’s … because people don’t want to admit it.”
Masbia director Alexander Rapaport told Hamodia that Boro Park has an above-average number of impoverished people, and that recently Masbia went from serving 120 portions to 160 a night.
The Agriculture Department report, released last week, found that the number of Americans struggling with hunger is falling nationally. The report found that 35 million people suffered food insecurity last year, meaning they didn’t have the money or resources to obtain enough food for active, healthy living. The number was 38 million in 2004.
Aine Duggan, vice president for government relations, policy and research at the Food Bank for New York City, said it’s troubling that hunger is on the rise in New York City while it is decreasing nationally.
“You just have an extraordinarily high number of working poor households and also elderly households that are struggling with poverty,” she said. “Other research shows that many of the people who are turning to soup kitchens and food banks around the city are making extremely tough choices about rent and food, food vs. utilities or food vs. medical costs.”
According to the coalition’s survey of the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens, the number of people served by those charities rose an estimated 11 percent in 2006.