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.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.
The American public responded more generously than ever before when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11. As of September 5, 2002, over $2.2 billion was raised, according to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
One unintended effect of these gifts has been controversy over their distribution among victims of the attack and their families. If the nation had applied free-market philosophy to this situation, no charitable assistance would have been necessary. Victims' involvement in the attack would be attributed to bad luck and individual choice. Employees of businesses in the trade center buildings would be seen as having chosen to take their chances in a building complex bombed by terrorists in 1993. Police officers and firefighters would be seen as having chosen dangerous careers, with extra financial rewards in return for the risks. Even airline passengers could be seen as having chosen a form of transportation in which there is little hope of survival if the vehicle suffers damage.
Fortunately, people across the nation applied a different standard to this tragedy, one of mutual aid. According to a poll by the Independent Sector taken in October 2001, about 70 percent of Americans gave blood, donated money, volunteered their time, or in some other way tried to help the victims of the attack and their families.
However, the unity expressed by these donations does not extend to how they should be used. The resulting dissension reveals the diversity of meanings attached to words like "fairness," "victim," "family," and "need".
WHO QUALIFIES AS A "VICTIM"?
It was understood at the start that "victims" were people killed or injured in the attack, and that their "families" were their wives, husbands and children. The public was also eager to see help given to workers involved in the rescue and cleanup efforts.
Other relatives of the deceased soon made their claims on assistance clear. Parents, siblings, and domestic partners were added to a broadened definition of "family". Some charities gave help to anyone financially dependent on the victim, including former wives and their children.
Because so much money was collected, charities were able to stretch the meaning of "victim" still further, to cover others harmed by direct results of the tragedy: the 70,000 people who lost their jobs, the 6,000 downtown residents who had to leave their homes, and neighboring small businesses and nonprofits whose offices were thrown into physical or functional disorder by the event.
For some purposes, the definition of the disaster itself was extended to include anthrax attacks and post 9/11 hate crimes. The Uniformed Firefighters Association extended payments from its relief fund to families of all firefighters killed in the line of duty since 1980, and in the future.
TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS OR HER NEED?
"Fairness" is another ambiguous term; its interpretation goes to the heart of our inconsistent convictions about how people should treat one another. There are many methods for dividing up September 11 funds, and each has been championed by one or another constituency.
Distributing funds according to financial need would give more money to a family that was poor before the disaster, and less to one whose breadwinner earned a high income and maintained life insurance. According to Shawn Pattison of the Robin Hood Foundation, their September 11-related relief fund follows this principle. "Robin Hood wants to make sure no one falls through the cracks, particularly low-income people," he says. Robin Hood targets its relief efforts toward groups like immigrant communities isolated by language barriers and fear of deportation, and low-income people with mental illness. "There were Central Americans working as day laborers cleaning up the site," he explains, "and they were not given proper protective equipment. A number are quite ill now." Robin Hood supports the Latin American Workers Project, which provides health services and financial help to these victims.
Other cases inspire more disagreement as to what constitutes need. Does it include making monthly mortgage payments on a million-dollar house? Families of the victims expect donations to enable them to maintain the standard of living they had before the disaster. However, the Internal Revenue Service has explicitly barred charities from distributing money to families of victims based on their living expenses before September 11. The large nonprofits that control most of the September 11 donations have decided not only how much cash to give victims for paying bills, but also what kinds of services victims need. The major ones turned out to be mental health counseling and employment services, which are not what might be expected by viewers of news coverage of relief efforts in response to earlier man-made and natural disasters.
EQUAL SHARES FOR EQUAL DISASTER
In the most literal interpretation of a distribution of aid based on equality, you would give the same amount to each victim. This would mean giving the same amount to a person whose store was closed for a week due to roadblocks, as to a widow with young children.
A more nuanced interpretation of "equality" gives equal shares to all people in the same situation. The Uniformed Firefighters Association gave $50,000 to the family of each married firefighter who was killed, but did not initially extend this policy to beneficiaries of single firefighters. After protest by the excluded relatives, the firefighters' union gave $50,000 to domestic partners, parents and other beneficiaries of deceased unmarried firefighters. The Robin Hood fund did not distinguish between levels of need when it sent $5,000 one-time payments to each family of the victims killed on September 11. "By late November, it was clear from talking to many of our families that the money was just not getting through," says Pattison. In this situation, all families were subject to the same bureaucratic delays in releasing aid; later and larger distributions could be expected to adjust the total aid to each family according to a yardstick of need.
The September 11th Fund, a joint project of the United Way of New York City and the Fund for the City of New York, collected $501 million, more than any charity other than the Red Cross' Liberty Fund. The September 11th Fund set the value of emergency cash assistance at two levels, depending on the degree of loss. Injured survivors and victims' families would get $10,000 each; people who lost jobs or homes as a direct result of the attack received $2,500 each. The same amounts were given in a second round of cash assistance.
COMPENSATION FOR FINANCIAL LOSS: THE TORT-BASED MODEL
The court system calculates the value of human lives as it goes about its everyday business. The wrongful death of a young person counts as a greater loss than the death of a retiree, because of the years of future work that are lost. Higher salaries at the time of death mean more lost income. Higher levels of education imply the possibility of career advancement leading to higher salaries. This method of determining the amount of assistance is favored by many of the victims' families. Those whose deceased relatives would have earned the most have the greatest incentive to call for this model of assistance, and it forms one element in the federal government's calculation of awards from the Victims Compensation Fund.
Financial loss also decides the size of loans and grants being given to businesses and nonprofits in the vicinity of Ground Zero, many of whom were unable to function normally for weeks or months. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises federally-funded grants and loans based on their annual revenues.
RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONAL LOSS
Most of the help being offered in recognition of emotional loss takes the form of mental health services or tangible gifts. The web site of the Twin Towers Fund "recognizes the importance of families spending time together in a fun and relaxing environment," and offers a variety of special events to the relatives of uniformed officers killed on September 11. They include sleepaway camp for children, golf camp for adults, free tickets to Mets games, sailing lessons, and sightseeing cruises from New York Waterways. Both the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Twin Towers Fund are planning holiday parties in December for the families they serve.
MEASURING A PERSON'S VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY
The sacrifices made by police officers and firefighters inspired intense sympathy in the general public, which gives extra weight to the death of a member of these forces even in normal times. A study of 37 relief funds serving September 11 victims showed that nearly half of the cash paid directly to victims and their families went to relatives of police officers, firefighters, and court officers.
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering payments to downtown residents, implying that people who remain in the neighborhood for the long term are more valued than those who leave or have recently arrived. Their web site offers a minimum grant of $1,000 to households, within specific boundaries, whose residents who lived at their present address last September 11. At least $750 more will be given to families who commit to staying in the area for at least one year, if they have one or more children younger than 18.
WHAT DO DONORS WANT DONE?
According to Barbara Bryan, president of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, many charities were "overcome by the size of the generosity and by the size of the need, and all the different levels of need." At the end of October 2001, the Red Cross announced it had collected more than enough to meet the needs of the victims -- so much more that its Liberty Fund could start underwriting some of the agency's more routine costs for services to American troops on active duty; community outreach to encourage neutrality, unity and tolerance; and telecommunications equipment, computer systems and accounting services. It also intended to set aside about half of the Liberty Fund for future needs of the WTC victims or for victims of future terrorist attacks.
This plan made the Red Cross the target of a growing sense of frustration and distrust among donors, victims' families and Ground Zero workers. Chief Executive Bernadine Healy was forced to resign; the organization was questioned by the United States Congress. The Red Cross had to revise its plan, promising to give out about half of the Liberty Fund by the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.
The September 11th Fund chose a different route. It conducted surveys of the general public in October and November of 2001, polling both donors and non-donors to September 11-related charities. The results supported the fund's decisions to expand services to the broad range of victims described above, and to provide a variety of short-term and long-term services in addition to cash assistance.
UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS OF CHARITABLE DISTRIBUTION METHODS
Even with public opinion polls, it is not possible to aid disaster victims in a way that pleases everyone. Each method of dividing up disaster relief funds reflects a conviction about what makes a good society; the subject stirs up almost as much passion as the idea of the World Trade Center disaster itself.
Distributing charitable aid based on financial need implies that charity should even out economic differences between recipients. Giving equal shares to all implies that charity does not have to take into account the different situations of recipients before the event that created their shared need. Giving charitable aid in proportion to the recipient's economic loss implies that charity should honor victims' property rights by preserving the existing hierarchy of wealth. Using non-monetary aid to compensate victims for emotional losses suggests that such suffering cannot be measured and is best addressed symbolically. Basing levels of aid on the victim's value to society implies that charity's purpose is to benefit society as a whole. And leaving the decision of how to use donations up to the donor means that their right to control their money trumps the greater experience of charitable professionals in determining the best use of assistance.
Barbara Bryan believes that charities will have to change in response to the disputes over disaster relief for the victims of September 11. "You have to be very clear about what you're asking for, " she says, but she is not sure of the specific steps that will have to be taken. "People are still trying to take lessons from all of this."
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.
Change is coming along the heavily industrialized East River shores of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn streets with lovely names like Metropolitan and Grand once linked Manhattan's teeming Lower East Side to the city's largest borough via ferries. They retain magnificent skyline views, as do the unused piers and wharves off of Huron, India and Java Streets, that via freighter linked these neighborhoods to markets and goods worldwide. These once busy waterfronts now house the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant, the hulking remains of abandoned industrial structures, dilapidated piers.
Today, a thriving club and residential scene has emerged on Bedford Avenue, one stop from Manhattan by the "L" Train and a short walk from the river. Waterfront that was once the exclusive preserve of power plants, oil storage facilities, lumber yards, ferry slips and working piers, is being transformed into parkland, housing and a focus for a community returning to its maritime roots. The existence of large, underutilized, relatively inexpensive, waterfront parcels, easy access to Manhattan and superb views of the Manhattan skyline fuel the transformation.
Change comes to these neighborhoods, much as it comes throughout the city, in fits and starts. In recent years, residents have opposed municipal uses such as solid waste transfer stations and power plants. Today, the locals are advocating for public access to both the East River waterfront and the banks of polluted and much-maligned Newtown Creek while continuing to oppose power plants.
Conflict has come to this corner of Brooklyn as large empty spaces have been discovered by groups as diverse as power plant proponents, waterfront recreationists, housing developers and open space advocates. The neighborhood's lack of open space and waterfront access combined with a long history of having noxious municipal uses sited in the community makes today 's clash interesting even by New York City standards. A City Planning Commission zoning review, that promises to be contentious, is under way.
In Williamsburg, NAG, a community organization originally founded to fight waste transfer stations, has called for improved public waterfront access, open space and mixed-use development. In Greenpoint, 41 local, civic and non-profit community groups joined to form the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning, GWAPP, an umbrella advocacy group. Again, the association's original focus was opposition to power plants. Both organizations now focus on the challenge posed by development --residential, commercial and industrial.
Joe Vance, co-chair of the Greenpoint association, described his role as one of the many watch dogs for the community. He hopes to "shepherd the neighborhood through the rezoning, open space and development processes" now unfolding.
At Brooklyn Borough Hall on June 13th, Governor Pataki announced grants to study and plan for public access to these Brooklyn waterfronts and for joint city and state development of open space at the WNYC transmitter site by the Greenpoint piers. These grants follow the recent $9.3 million purchase of more than six acres at Kent Avenue between North 7th and North 9th Streets for New York University sports fields, a waterfront esplanade and community open space.
Private sector forces are in the mix too. Two proposed waterfront developments in Greenpoint, comprising 38 acres, would, in Joe Vance's estimate add 15,000 new residents to a community of perhaps 75,000 people, dramatically inundating the ara.
And then, there is the power plant. To help meet the city's estimated future electricity demand, the TransGas Energy (TGE) System has proposed a 1,100-megawatt facility for the Bushwick Creek Inlet at the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The energy company favors the site because of its proximity to electric transmission lines, oil pipelines, Con Ed steam and the river. The neighborhood groups have banded together to oppose the project. According to Vance, "this is the first power plant of this size proposed for a waterfront site without a power plant."
TGE is expected to submit its application late this summer.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.