By Hadassa Kalatizadeh
NYC’s food banks are now servicing a wide array of newly unemployed residents. The Big Apple’s soup kitchens, food banks and do-good pop-up services are straining to meet the increasing needs of residents during the coronavirus crisis. As reported by the NY Post, actors, musicians, artists and even graduate school students are starting to show up at the city’s food banks, as the city’s unemployment rises.
Winston Majette, executive director of the Harlem chamber of commerce, confirmed the influx of hundreds of neighborhood newcomers. “That’s the dynamic in just two weeks,” Majette said. Similarly, City Harvest said it has experience the growing need. The nonprofit, which distributes food donated by restaurants and other retailers to about 250 food pantries and soup kitchens across NYC, says it delivered 6.6 million pounds of food between March 9 and April 12 this year. That is close to 5 million pounds more than the same period last year, as per Racine Lee Droz, City Harvest’s director of food sourcing. “Before COVID, we saw the same faces every week. Now we see lots of families with young children.”
Food Bank for New York City, which is the largest anti-hunger organization in the city, says the number of people served could double or even triple from the 2.5 million level before coronavirus. “In Richmond Hills, Queens, at the River Fund, we had an agency serving 1,000 to 1,500 people before COVID,” said Leslie Gordon, Food Bank’s president and chief executive. “It’s now going up to 5,000 people in line and that could continue to grow. This is not unique. It’s a bellwether for what is happening across New York City.”
“I felt like I had landed in a war zone,” said Diana Lee, founder of the Do-Good Auto Coalition, whose sponsors include Maserati. “There were hundreds of people lined up around the block. They were fighting for food, shouting at each other when they thought some people were taking too much. It was really hard. I’ve never seen anything like it. By the time we unloaded all of the food, 75 percent of it was already gone.” Last week the organization delivered 2,500 pounds of food from three currently shuttered Pret a Manger outlets.
Last week, about 791,000 NY residents applied for unemployment benefits, as per the Department of Labor. A New School study revealed that New York State has already lost 1.2 million jobs, and projects that one-third of the city could soon be unemployed.
Last Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to spend $170 million on food for the hungry. “People are literally asking, ‘Where is my next meal coming from?’,” said de Blasio. Non-profits have been rising to the task left and right, and restaurant-donation pickups from places like Pret A Manger and Paris Baguette have also been swelling.
City Harvest’s Droz says the nonprofit expects things to get even worse before it gets better. “The need will last far longer than when the government reopens the city because so many people are unemployed,” she said. “We plan on operating this way until the end of September.”
