Pantries Struggle to Provide Thanksgiving Meals

While most people enjoyed warm feasts this past Thanksgiving, local soup kitchens and food pantries struggled to provide the little that they could for needy New Yorkers, due to decreased federal funding for emergency food aid.

Since 1982, the faith-based aid organization Broadway Community, Inc. has run a food pantry in the basement of the Broadway Presbyterian Church on the corner of 114th Street.

“Our [food] orders have been cut by 50 percent,” volunteer Lenny Fincher said. “We serve 75 to 100 people a day on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and lately we have not been able to give seconds. We used to always be able to give seconds.”

This shortfall has been exacerbated by an increase in the number of individuals and families relying on city aid services. According to an annual survey released Nov. 20 by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, demand at food pantries has gone up by 20 percent since 2006, with 1.3 million people now in need. This comes on top of last year’s estimated 11 percent increase.

“We used to put up seven or eight tables,” Fincher said. “Now we have to put up at least 12 tables and next year it’ll be 14.”

The nonprofit Food Bank for New York City serves as the city’s largest distributor of free food and a source for about 1,000 pantries. The Food Bank now distributes 3 million pounds of food per month to soup kitchens, down from as much as 5.5 million pounds in recent years.

According to the Food Bank, its warehouse, normally filled with 7-8 million pounds of food, now holds 3 million pounds.

A joint study released on October 18 by the Food Bank and Cornell University, showed that New York City receives a little more than half the amount of emergency food annually from the federal government than it did three years ago.

Eleanor Donaldson, a social worker and a member of Broadway Presbyterian Church for 30 years, has volunteered with Broadway Community Inc. for the past four years. “Food Bank doesn’t have very much these days,” she said. “The chefs put in an order and Food Bank doesn’t send it. Our numbers have increased. We provide about 25,000 meals each year and they haven’t given us more money. In fact, they’ve given us a little less.”

Before Barnard broke for Thanksgiving, President Judith Shapiro sent a college-wide e-mail encouraging faculty and students to ameliorate the food shortage problem in city soup kitchens. “Now more than ever, food pantries in our community need support and donations from private institutions and individuals,” she wrote.

With a decrease in government food and funding at 51 percent of New York City food pantries in 2007, a record 59 percent reported lacking the resources to meet the growing demand. A farm bill, currently stalled in the United States Senate, could increase aid if passed.

Fincher first came to the food pantry after losing his apartment and all of his possessions in a fire in November of 2003. A Vietnam veteran, he had retired in 2000 after working for Verizon—and its previous incarnations—for 32 years. “I worked all my life,” Fincher said. “I had never been to a soup kitchen. I thought soup kitchens were only for drunks and drug addicts. But when my home burned down, I had nowhere else to go.”

In Manhattan, according to the New York Coalition Against Hunger’s 2007 survey, demand for food increased at 76 percent of food pantries and 30 percent of them were forced to ration food by limiting portion size, reducing hours of operation, and/or turning people away.

“It gets political because it’s a trend of the federal government taking away from programs for poor and low-income people. We are not political, although now we may think politically,” Donaldson said.