Photo courtesy of Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger.
This Thanksgiving, some struggling families are finding that they have less to spend for a holiday meal.
The reason is, earlier this month, the boost to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that came from the 2009 Economic Recovery Act expired. http://thebrooklynink.com/2013/11/14/53261-brooklyn-grocers-and-soup-kitchens-concerned-over-food-stamp-cuts/ In Brooklyn alone, an estimated 200,000 families, or approximately one-third of the borough’s population, rely on food stamps. About half of them are children, according to the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness.
Because of the reduction it is estimated that a family of four will face a $36 drop in benefits per month. A family of three, meanwhile, will lose $29 per month, and an individual will lose $11 month. (Altogether, the change will reduce the federal food-stamp spending by $5 billion over the next year.) Combine such cuts with the need for more food in the holiday season, and you have a recipe for hunger.
As a result of the SNAP reductions, soup kitchens and food pantries throughout the borough are preparing to serve more families not only through the holidays but year round as the impact of the cuts begin to sink in. At Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, the largest food pantry in Brooklyn, the executive director Dr. Melony Samuels says the pantry has seen a 37 percent increase in demand since the cuts began to phase in on Nov. 1. Samuels says the demand is so high that they have had to ask City Harvest Food Bank for more food.
“Right now families are out there asking us do you have turkeys? Do you have ham? Do you have chicken? and these things we have run out of because of the enormous amount of increase and demand we have seen,” said Samuels. The pantry provides basic staples to 12,000 low-income individuals a month.
Samuels also says the Bed-Stuy pantry expects more families to rely 100 percent on their emergency relief pantry this holiday season. So it is hosting a virtual can drive and collecting donations online to help support the 318,042 meals they expect to serve this Thanksgiving, which is up from 232,146 in previous years. “We can’t look at the amount of money that’s cut. We have to look at the meals that are being loss and that really has seen an enormous cut,” said Samuels.
Because people have their benefits replenished at different times of the month, the results of the cuts will not be felt all at once. Alexander Rapaport, executive director of Masbia, a nonprofit soup kitchen and food pantry, which has two locations in Brooklyn, said some people will feel the effect of the SNAP cuts this Thanksgiving more than others. But in any event, Rapaport said Masbia is anticipating an increase in demand because of the holidays, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. But he stresses that food pantries need donations and volunteers year round, and that they work against hunger every day.
Rev. Robert Jackson co-founder of the Brooklyn Rescue Mission, says in the week after the SNAP cuts people were worried about what was going to happen, and that Thanksgiving and Christmas are always a busy time with people looking for food. “It’s always a very busy season Thanksgiving and Christmas on the food line because people are trying to make do with the little that they have and stretch it because they have relatives coming and they have friends coming. They are trying to make do with the food that they have in their house,” said Jackson.
In 2012, According to the Agricultural Department 17.6 million families lacked sufficient resources to put food on the table. And the latest Census reported that 15 percent of Americans live in poverty.
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