On most mornings Christopher Saxe wakes before dawn to the sounds of men hauling trash from the alley beneath his window. He can hear the truck's engine roaring, its radio blasting, the shouts of the men. And when they raise the dumpster and drop it back to the ground, Saxe says, "It sounds like they're throwing air conditioners off the roof."
Saxe lives next to a movie theater in the East Village, and for the last four years he has battled with the company responsible for carting the theater's trash, which is called IESI. He has yelled out his window and called everyone he can think of to complain. The actions sometimes lead to temporary relief, but the problem keeps coming back.
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of New Yorkers, confront similar cacophonies. So, last month Mayor Michael Bloomberg initiated Operation Silent Night, the city's most aggressive attack on noise since 1994, when the police department focused on revelers in Greenwich Village. The initiative, which is designed to quiet unruly neighbors, curb drag racing on city streets and silence freaked-out car alarms, targets 24 neighborhoods considered to be among the city's noisiest.
This month, City Councilmember Alan Gerson, who represents lower Manhattan, announced plans to introduce a package of bills to reduce noise. The measures would allow police to confiscate motorcycles without mufflers, place further limits on construction work and restrict the city's raucous nightlife.
Operation Silent Night may not offer much help to Saxe, who does not live in one of the neighborhoods targeted by the program. Nor will it necessarily aid Queens residents afflicted by airplane noise, neighbors of the city's few heliports or those near large construction sites, like the Time Warner-AOL site on Columbus Circle or the Bloomberg LP site on the Upper East Side. In light of such shortcomings, some critics see the program as another way to get more revenues from city residents without raising taxes, and others say that, for all its pragmatism, the initiative barely scratches the surface of the city's noise pollution problems.
New York already has a noise ordinance that, among other things, prohibits horn honking except in emergencies and restricts the hours for construction work. All car alarms must shut off automatically within three minutes or the owners face fines.
But the mayor's office clearly believes more is needed. Already, Operation Silent Night has intensified police scrutiny in the 24 neighborhoods -- several in each borough, and ranging in size from a single block to several square miles. According to the plan, noise complaints that come into the hotline, police precincts or the city Department of Environmental Protection will now be quickly sent on to each precinct's executive officer, who will work with city agencies to address the complaint. Police officers in the listed neighborhoods will have noise meters and the power to write more summonses levying heftier fines, tow more alarm-blaring cars that will now cost more for their owners to retrieve and, in extreme cases, make arrests.
No one has put a price tag on the program, but with the city facing billions of dollars in budget cuts, should the mayor allocate any money to relieve the stresses of noise?
How to Complain
The city government and the Council on Environment of New York City offer a list of places that handle noise complaints. and ways to complain about noise. The Quality of Life hotline at 888-677-LIFE or 888-677-5433 handles a variety of noise complaints. But, depending upon the type of noise involved, it may be more effective to go to another city agency. For construction, nightclubs, outside speakers, private carter's trucks, barking dog, air conditioners and manufacturing machinery, call the Department of Environmental Protection at 718 DEP-HELP (337-4357). If the noisy garbage truck belongs to the city, go to the Department of Sanitation at 212 219-8090. If the problem arise from noisy neighbors, boom boxes, car alarms, loud passers-by, motorcycles, or noise outside a bar or nightclub, contact the local police precinct. For persistent difficulties, contact your local Community Board. If a metal plate in the street is the source of the disturbance, you must first determine who is doing the work -- a government agency, Con Ed, the phone company or Keyspan, to cite a few usual suspects. A nearby truck may offer a clue, as can the plate itself which may be marked. Ill-fitting gratings or manhole covers should be reported to Department of Transportation at 212 CALL-DOT (225-5368). |
In taking on the problem, says John Feinblatt, criminal justice coordinator at City Hall and one of the people in charge of implementing the initiative, Bloomberg is simply responding to his citizenry. Of the 97,000 complaints that come into the Quality of Life hotline each year, about 85 percent are about noise. Already this year, 93,000 people have called with complaints about noise [see box]. "Calls to the Quality of Life Hotline tell us that people in this city are concerned about noise," Feinblatt says. "Operation Silent Night is a response to those concerns."
Art Strickler, district manager of Community Board Two, which covers the West Village, said his office gets more complaints about excessive noise than any other problem. But he is less than totally sympathetic. "This is Greenwich Village," he said. "If they want peace and quiet, they should move to some bedroom community in Brooklyn."
Bloomberg's office has stated that getting tough on noise polluters is similar to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's cracking down on squeegee men, turnstile jumpers and other very small-time offenders, and the administration hopes that it will produce similar reductions in crime. However, neither the administration nor experts can point to any studies linking crime levels with noise, or criminals with loud behavior.
Others contend that noise poses a very real public health hazard. Most obviously it can affect hearing, causing something called Noise Induced Hearing Loss. But the World Health Organization has listed an array of other effects, including a higher risk of hypertension and some types of heart disease. Unwanted noise creates tiredness and exhaustion, which in turn results in a lack of productivity on the job and anti-social behavior. People afflicted by excessive exposure to loud noise can become withdrawn and sullen.
Studies have concluded that students in noisy classrooms, such as those near airports or trains, do not learn as well as those in quieter settings. As evidence of the seriousness of the noise problem, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has established guidelines for safe noise levels in the workplace.
Sound levels, are measured in decibels (dB), with a normal conversation usually registering at about 60 decibels. Health problems can result from noises registering above about 75 to 90 decibels. A noisy restaurant or a construction site can be about 90 decibels, while motorcycles, firecrackers and small arms fire may emit sounds from 120 to 140 decibels.
John Dallas has been working since 1994 with the Bronx Campaign for Peace and Quiet, which is affiliated with Christ the King Church, to educate the public about the benefits of peace and quiet and the dangers of noise. "In a lot of neighborhoods you hear music blasting out of apartments," Dallas says, "and then you realize there are kids in there. Their hearing is being impaired. Some people say it's culture, but those kids are being harmed."
The effects of noise pollution can ripple through a neighborhood. "Noise pollution, from our perspective, is connected with impoverishment," Dallas says. "When you foster peace and quiet, when you live in a way that respects other people, you improve community." Noise, he adds, "chases away the middle class. People who want to improve their lives and be creative move away. So noise does not only impair physical health but also economic, social and spiritual."
According to some people involved with noise issues, Operation Silent Night, though a positive first step, fails to address some major sources of noise pollution in the city.
The targeted neighborhoods were selected on the basis of the number and locations of calls to the Quality of Life Hotline, which only addresses certain kinds of common problems. "The mayor is touching the tip of the iceberg," says Arline Bronzaft, a member of the Council on the Environment of New York City and a nationally recognized expert on noise pollution. "You can't think that you just go and ticket cab drivers [for honking horns] and that that is going to solve the problem." Noise comes from many more sources in addition to those picked by the mayor's program and affects many more areas.
Bronzaft says that the mayor's initiative has left him with the responsibility for quieting the city. "He's going to have to make a difference and lessen the din," she says. But Bronzaft says that will be difficult and points to three major gaps.
First, the Department of Environmental Protection enforces a Noise Code that is 30 years old and no longer addresses the real sources of noise or the latest ways to quiet them. The result is that the department, which is generally regarded as highly responsive to complaints, issues violations in only one out of four responses. "That's a poor batting average," Bronzaft says.
In response, the department has hired the consulting firm of Alle, King, Rosen and Fleming to update the code. "Clearly, it's time," agrees Feinblatt of the mayor's office. The firm's recommendations will eventually be open to public comment and could make it before the City Council. So far, though, no one knows what changes the firm might suggest or when this might happen.
Second, Bronzaft says, noise violations issued by police officers are usually thrown out in court because they are improperly written. Police must state their case objectively and, more often than not, this is almost impossible where noise is concerned. It may be that the noise meters that officers will now carry will help solve some of that problem by quantifying noise levels, though it is unclear how courts will view that information.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, many agencies that receive complaints about noise are not a part of Operation Silent Night. Mediation boards, the Buildings Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transit Authority, as well as the Sanitation Department and the Trade Waste Commission, all get calls from New Yorkers fed up with some sound or another. Yet, the new program focuses only on complaints received by the Quality of Life Hotline.
And there is some dispute over whether the targeted neighborhoods are indeed the city's loudest. For example, people in downtown Brooklyn were upset that it was not included as one of the target areas, despite high noise levels and frequent complaints to the Department of Environmental Protection, while certain other areas in Brooklyn, with more complaints to the hotline but fewer to Environmental Protection, were. In Manhattan, according to the Mayor's Report Card, two of the areas with the most complaints are the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. Not coincidentally, the City Council members from those districts had handed out brochures telling people to call the hotline. Yet, it would be hard to claim that those two neighborhoods have more noise problems than many other areas in the city.
The fact is that 93,000 does not represent anywhere near the total number of complaints about noise received by all city agencies. And, further, all the complaints made to every city agency probably do not represent anything approaching all the sleepless nights, interrupted conversations, lost thoughts and other problems created by a noisy city. For one thing, according to Bronzaft, "people in poor neighborhoods probably don't call because they don't think people will be responsive. But noise in this city is an equal opportunity offender."
While the mayor's office did not respond to requests for a numeric breakdown of complaints to the Quality of Life Hotline -- such numbers may not in fact exist -- the Department of Environmental Protection was able to show the most common complaints it received. According to its figures, air conditioners and ventilation equipment are the most frequent causes of noise complaints. Barking dogs, construction sites and loud music come next, followed by ice cream trucks and private carters. Amy Boyle, acting director of the Noise Center at the League for the Hard of Hearing says, "The problems [with noise] are as diverse as the people in the city, whether it's a person with neighbor noise or noisy motorcycles or cafes or elevated subways."
Or airplanes. Residents of neighborhoods around John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport are overwhelmed by noise from planes. At a press conference in Astoria, Bloomberg mistakenly responded to a question about airplane noise by stating that federal authorities have jurisdiction over the issue.
But Dr. A. Allen Greene, vice president of government affairs for the advocacy group Sane Aviation for Everyone (S.A.F.E.), says that is an easy out for politicians. "Politicians, every time there is an airport expansion plan, hop on the bandwagon," he says. "The city should take an active role in protecting citizens from aircraft noise. The city owns the airports. The Port Authority operates them. It's just not true to say that it's a federal issue."
The city does have the power to control another recurring nuisance: nightclubs. Interestingly, as the result of previous legal actions, New York takes a tougher stand against "unauthorized dancing" -- moving one's body to the beat in a bar or restaurant that does not have a cabaret license -- than it does toward excessive noise.
As part of his anti-noise agenda, Gerson wants the city to do just the opposite: relax the constraints on dancing in return for increased penalties on noise and enforcing soundproofing regulations. "If an establishment is appropriately soundproofed, government should not care if people inside dance. Otherwise, it is an impingement on personal expression," Gerson has said.
Operation Silent Night and Gerson's initiative seem to signal a newfound attention to a long-standing problem. "Consistently, across the board, we're being exposed to dangerously high levels of noise," says Boyle of the Noise Center. "There's a lot of noise out there, and whether or not it's louder than it was 30 years ago, it's too loud."
While the 2002 elections are empowering anti-environmental leadership in the United States Senate, they also represent a high water mark for New York's environment, at least in terms of political rhetoric. All three major statewide officials -- Governor George E. Pataki, Comptroller Alan Hevesi and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer -- campaigned as friends of New York's natural resources and actively touted their support from environmental groups.
Of course, there will be tough battles ahead. But here in New York (and in contrast to Washington D.C.), our top elected officials have all demonstrated their interests in conservation and/or environmental health issues. And all three owe a debt to their environmental friends and supporters.
The governor, who has developed a reputation as an avid outdoorsman and strong conservationist, highlighted his environmental support, perhaps to a greater degree than any of his predecessors. He publicized his endorsements from the Sierra Club and the New York League of Conservation Voters. One of his high-visibility campaign ads included comments from the League of Conservation Voters' chairman, Paul Elson, who identified "cleaner air, cleaner water and more open space" as among the governor's environmental accomplishments.
H. Carl McCall, Pataki's opponent, also embraced environmental issues in the campaign. He criticized the governor for failure to advance refinancing of the State Superfund program (for clean-up of toxic waste sites) and for lack of progress on efforts to remediate and redevelop urban "brownfield" properties.
A thoughtful New York Times analysis of Governor Pataki's record on key issues, written by Richard Perez-Pena, credited the governor with keeping hundreds of thousands of acres of upstate lands protected, advancing urban parks, and helping to persuade the Bush Administration to order the clean-up of toxic PCBs from the Hudson River. But the assessment also noted that he reduced monitoring compliance and fines against polluters and sought to ease clean-up standards at toxic waste sites. The Times report concluded that "Mr. Pataki's oratory on environmental issues has exceeded his performance in all areas but conservation, partly because he has promised so much."
New York State Comptroller-elect Alan Hevesi also publicized his environmental support in his successful and hotly contested race against Assemblyman John Faso. As City Comptroller until last year, Hevesi proved himself to be a dedicated protector of the New York City water supply. Among other things, he skillfully defeated an ill-advised proposal to sell off the city's reservoirs and water assets for quick cash. And he played a crucial role in strengthening the 1997 city-state watershed agreement.
One ad that the Hevesi team ran frequently in the final weeks before Election Day highlighted his Sierra Club and New York League of Conservation Voters support. And on the campaign trail, Hevesi attacked his opponent for, among other things, his "votes against the environment."
A comparison prepared by the Albany-based group Environmental Advocates of the voting records of Hevesi and Faso covering the six year period (1988-1993) during which they both served in the State Assembly found that Hevesi's overall average score was 85 percent pro-environment, while Faso's was 69 percent. Not surprisingly, Faso did not focus on environmental issues in his losing effort.
The third statewide candidate, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who had the easiest contest on Election Day, also featured his unassailable environmental track-record in his low-key campaign. During his first term in office, the Attorney General was a steadfast environmental advocate from the outset. After hiring the respected lawyer Peter Lehner ( a former colleague of mine at the Natural Resources Defense Council) to head his Environmental Protection Bureau, Spitzer and his staff took on polluters big and small.
In campaign appearances, Spitzer frequently mentioned his lawsuits to curb air pollution from mid-west power plants, to force the clean-up of PCBs in the Hudson River and to rescue hundreds of New York City's endangered community gardens.
Spitzer's opponent, Judge Dora Irizarry, shared an interest in environmental issues, although her underfunded campaign was unable to get her message out.
The prominence of environmental protection as a campaign issue extended beyond these three statewide contests. In several other races throughout the region, environmental themes played critical roles for winning candidates.
In what was one of the most incendiary Congressional campaigns in the region, Southhampton College provost Tim Bishop squeaked by one term Congressman Felix Grucci in the contest for eastern Long Island's House seat. Bishop was helped over the top by an intensive ad campaign in the closing weeks that focused largely on Grucci's weak positions on toxic waste clean-up and other environmental issues.
And in the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey, former Senator Frank Lautenberg defeated businessman Doug Forrester. Lautenberg's campaign, and ads from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, filled the airways with environmental messages (e.g. Forrester "wants taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning up SUPERFUND toxic waste sites").
The increasingly visible use of the environment as a 2002 campaign theme in the New York region tells us something about the candidates who sponsored these messages and the voters who responded to them. First, it suggests that New York State's three statewide officials all have at least some track record on and commitment to improving environmental quality. Second, it reflects a growing recognition of the importance of environmental issues to New York voters. And third, it is evidence that New York has in fact become something of a "green state" -- a place where environmental health and natural resource protection have become cornerstone values that are widely shared by the electorate.
To be sure, there are many other issues on the minds of New Yorkers, none of the three state-wide office holders were elected primarily for their environmental accomplishments. In addition, it is unrealistic to expect that the governor, the comptroller and the attorney general will always (or even often) be able to act in concert on environmental issues. And the expressed views of these three officials on environmental issues do nothing to resolve the extraordinary problems that continue to plague the legislative process in Albany.
Nevertheless, New York's highest elected officials have all appealed to the voters to support them in their campaigns based in part upon the candidate's environmental interests and sympathies. It is now up to New York's voters to hold their elected officials accountable for insuring cleaner air, cleaner water and more open space.
Eric Goldstein is co-director of the urban program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Every day, the lines form - more men than women waiting for a soup kitchen, more women than men outside food pantries.
The federal government sponsors half a dozen nutrition programs meant to prevent Americans from going hungry, including senior lunch subsidies, meals for schoolchildren, and food stamps. But emergency food programs report rising demand for their assistance every year.
Since 1995, the number of people receiving food stamps in New York City has sharply declined, and the use of food pantries and soup kitchens has nearly doubled. Opponents of welfare reform believe these changes are connected. They also attribute the growing need for food assistance to the economy: when times were good, the poor gained little; now that times are bad, they are the first to feel the pinch.
BEING ELIGIBLE FOR FOOD STAMPS IS NOT ENOUGH
Food stamps have never been used by everyone who is eligible, partly because of the widespread belief they are only for welfare recipients. Many low-paid workers do not know they might qualify for food stamps. Others are too proud to apply for benefits, or intimidated by the application process.
The recent drop in the food stamp rolls can be traced to two laws passed in 1996. One barred most immigrants from receiving food stamps; the other mandated welfare reform. The Food Stamp Reauthorization Act of 2002 restored eligibility to most immigrants, but those who lost benefits under the 1996 law may not know they can re-apply under the new rules. When immigrants do apply for benefits, they encounter the city's failure to comply with a court order to translate written information into all needed languages, and to provide each client with a caseworker who speaks their language.
Make the Road by Walking, a Brooklyn-based social justice organization, joined the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the New York Legal Assistance Group to sue the Giuliani administration for violating the right of non-English speakers to services in their own language. After losing in court, the Human Resource Administration mailed 500,000 notices, in 17 languages, announcing the right to free translation and interpretation services. The agency also translated paperwork into nine languages, and agreed to assign bilingual caseworkers to clients with limited English skills.
However, the city is still a long way from fulfilling the mandates upheld by the court decision. Make the Road by Walking monitors the city's compliance by reviewing its quarterly reports, and by sending members and staff to inspect application sites.
"Even if a form is translated, it often sits in a folder on peoples' desks," reports Andrew Friedman, executive director of Make the Road by Walking. Computer-generated documents are not yet translated, so some clients are sent notices they cannot read. "The consequences are obscene," says Friedman. If a client misses an appointment or brings the wrong documents to an interview, her benefits can be lost."
The Human Resource Administration currently matches clients with caseworkers speaking their language in 40 percent of cases. Several years ago, it was just five percent. Friedman attributes the success of individual centers to their managers, while the system as a whole is "perfectly content to have people unable to access their services."
The second cause of declining food stamp use in New York City, "welfare to work," is related to the city's incorrect administration of state and federal regulations. Recipients are entitled to get food stamps even if they are sanctioned for failing to meet strict work requirements. Those who find paying jobs can keep food stamps until their salaries rise above the eligibility limit, which was $1,180 a month for a family of three in 2001. However, for years local welfare workers did not tell recipients who were losing cash benefits that food stamps were still available to them. The city automatically cut off food stamps whenever a person's cash benefits were stopped.
Food stamp assistance did not decline equally in all ethnic groups. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that between 1995 and 1998, Latinos were the hardest hit. Eight out of every hundred Latino households in the city stopped receiving food stamps between 1995 and 1998. African-American households saw a smaller change: less than two percent lost food stamps during that time. In contrast, nearly 1% of all White and Asian households were newly eligible for food stamps between 1995 and 1998.
Last August, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum issued a report comparing New York City with 14 other cities in the state and nation. New York was the only one where food stamp rolls continued to drop even while the unemployment rate rose. The state's Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance has accepted recommendations made in the report, although most have not yet been carried out.
"Change takes time," says Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, "but there are fewer problems than there used to be." A shortened application form is in the works, as are an extra two months of food stamps for newly employed recipients. According to Berg, the city is lagging behind the rest of the state in this extension of benefits.
THE PERSISTENT GROCERY GAP
When the city cuts off their food assistance, clients often find out only at the supermarket checkout counter, when their electronic benefits card doesn't work. Facing a stretch of days without meals, they turn to emergency food programs run by private nonprofit organizations. Nearly a thousand people searching for emergency food called the Food for Survival hotline in the six months up to November 2002.
Even if everyone who is entitled to them were getting food stamps, many would still use up their allotment too soon. Food programs see rising demand as each month nears its end; some clients count on them to supplement food stamps year-round.
There are over 1,000 emergency food programs in the city, according to Food for Survival, whose Food Bank is the major local distributor of emergency food. Over 700 food pantries are members, plus 300 soup kitchens, and over a hundred shelters and other service providers. This patchwork feeds about half a million people each week, and a total of 1.5 million people over the course of a year. The Food Bank distributed 61.5 million pounds of food last year, an increase of more than 10 million pounds over the previous year.
WHO USES EMERGENCY FOOD PROGRAMS?
According to a survey of its member programs released by Food for Survival in October 2001, one in four clients reported having recently chosen between buying food and paying their rent or mortgage. About the same number were receiving food stamps, although many more may have been eligible. Slightly fewer lived in a household with at least one working adult member. Very few clients were homeless or on public assistance.
For the majority, their main source of income was Social Security (including disability as well as old age payments), workers' compensation, or a pension. This suggests that more than half were elderly and/or had disabilities. Adults in one in six client households said that in the past year, they had to skip meals nearly every month, or eat smaller portions, because they could not afford enough food.
FILLING THE FOOD BANK
Federal, state, and local governments provide a large part of the Food Bank's supplies; budget deficits threaten this assistance. The city's Emergency Food Assistance Program, the main source of food for over 200 programs, was on the list of contingency budget cuts announced by the Bloomberg administration last spring and is likely to be on the list this year.
The Food Bank also relies on individual donors, corporations, and foundations, who mostly give cash. Nonprofit organizations collect food and funds, and City Harvest brings leftovers from restaurants, caterers, and others. Since the start of 2002, these private donations have fallen sharply.
THE MISSING BILLION DOLLARS
The New York City Coalition Against Hunger estimates that at least 800,000 New Yorkers who are eligible for food stamps are not receiving them. Those who do get assistance receive an average of $104 a month, allowing about a dollar per meal. Not only is this skimpy for individual recipients; it also represents a huge loss to the city's economy. If all eligible New Yorkers were getting food stamps, there would be close to a billion extra dollars, all of them federal, pouring into neighborhood grocery stores and bodegas each year. Economists know there would be a "multiplier effect": for every new dollar spent in New York City, several more are generated as jobs are created, profits are made, and workers and business owners spend the extra dollars.
That doesn't happen when food stamps are replaced by charity. Nearly all of the staff of food pantries and soup kitchens are volunteers. Their work is vital to the people they feed, but they don't earn any new dollars. The programs spend less on food than their customers would if they had money, for two reasons. Their purchases are supplemented by donated goods, and they buy too little to give out the amount of food their clients would buy if they had food stamps.
DEMAND OUTSTRIPS SUPPLY
Many feeding programs now have to turn away clients, reduce their hours, or dole out smaller portions. Meanwhile, nonprofits that never used to feed clients are finding that giving out groceries is faster than getting emergency food stamps from the city. For the United Way report, IN JEOPARDY: THE IMPACT OF WELFARE REFORM ON NONPROFIT HUMAN SERVICE AGENCIES IN NEW YORK CITY, researcher Mimi Abramovitz interviewed a nonprofit executive who told her, "We don't want to be a food pantry. Nonetheless, if someone is literally desperate, we do have emergency food on hand and the requests for it have increased dramatically."
Make the Road by Walking opened a food pantry three years ago to feed members in crisis situations. In contradiction to official policy, "HRA is still telling people they can't get food stamps when they are on SSI or disability payments," says Friedman. Such errors can take weeks to correct. The agency's members may also encounter delays at food pantries, some of which require documents to determine eligibility. "We know our people, so we don't have to screen them," Friedman explains, adding that, "The pantry is empty more often now; it's more heavily used."
Emergency feeding programs are no longer just for emergencies. When they cannot authorize food stamps for clients, the city's own eligibility workers send them to pantries and soup kitchens. Unfortunately, feeding programs are themselves starved for resources, relying on uncertain flows of supplies, donations and volunteers. As charity is stretched thinner, the weak points in the government's nutritional safety net grow more obvious. Too little help is going to too few people.
RESOURCES
Where to find a food pantry or soup kitchen: call the Emergency Food Locator (866-692-3663), or the City Harvest Hunger Hotline (866-888-8777).
How to influence public policy on hunger, visit the New York City Coalition Against Hunger web site
Volunteering at a soup kitchen: call New York Cares (212-228-5000), or visit their web site. Remember that most soup kitchens have extra volunteers at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so your help may be even more welcome during the rest of the year.
Making donations: In November 2002, the NYC Bank-to-Bank Partnership is collecting food at over 100 bank branches. To find the nearest location, see the Food For Survival web site. At other times, call 718-991-4300 to donate or start a food drive.
Changes in the food stamp program as a result of the food stamp reauthorization law
Food stamp statistics from the city's Human Resource Administration: HRA Facts.