By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — The line outside the Trinity Lower East Side church begins forming more than an hour before the soup kitchen on East 9th Street opens each day to serve hundreds of free meals.
Dozens of needy people snake from the entrance to Avenue B for the chance to get a hot plate of food that will often be the only meal they eat all day.
Across the street in Tompkins Square Park, another group starts to queue for the church's food pantry, which hands out loaves of bread, canned goods and other packaged foods, a good two hours before it opens.
All told, Trinity serves up anywhere between 250 and 300 meals per day — second helpings are allowed — and gives out groceries to roughly 50 families per week.
"You don't have to listen to a sermon to get food," said church pastor Phil Trzynka, who's been at Trinity since 2000. "Everybody deserves a meal. Just your presence here is accepted as the knowledge that you need food."
But the parish is anxiously awaiting the results of its application with the state's Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides about a quarter of the soup kitchen's annual $400,000 budget.
The church's current five-year grant is set to expire this summer, and Trzynka worries about what will become of the thriving food pantry if funding is not restored.
"We live day by day around here financially," he said, noting that the rest of Trinity's funding for the soup kitchen and pantry comes from the city, grants and private donations. "Every bit of funding that comes in keeps us alive. We don't have anything in savings."
A state Department of Health spokesman said the agency is currently reviewing applications, and that a decision on which organizations receive a new five-year grant will be made in the near future.
"We recognize that certain programs are playing an important role," said spokesman Peter Constantakes, who declined to say whether the grants will be affected by the recent budget wrangling in Albany.
"We'll use the resources we have available to fund the program that we think are doing a good job."
The church, which has provided the needy with meals since the 1960s, has recently seen an increase in Chinatown residents trekking to the East Village for the food pantry, creating even more demand for the services, Trzynka explained.
Trinity serves roughly 57,000 meals and 120,000 grocery bags per year — a 14 percent total increase from a decade ago, and a nearly fourfold increase since 2000.
"That's a lot of food that comes in and out," the pastor said. "If that funding leaves, we have no idea how we'll survive."
Inside the soup kitchen on a recent weekday, visitors chowed down on salmon casserole, green beans and corn, salad, and apple sauce.
"There's a lot of them that come every day," said Dolores Rodriguez, the kitchen's head cook, of the many familiar faces she sees at Trinity.
"Everyone's going to eat," she added. "I make sure of it."
Rodriguez said she's noticed an increase in young people coming to the church, noting that any decrease in funding may force Trinity to turn away visitors or not offer the most nutritional and high-quality ingredients.
"I like to see their faces when they try the food and like it," she said, noting she's heard everything from Spanish to Russian to being spoken in the cafeteria.
Visitors described Trinity as one of the more welcoming and generous soup kitchens around.
"They feed you really well and it's a nice hearty meal," said William Bowen, 50, who is currently living in transitional housing in Times Square. "After this you're pretty much set for the day."
John Delgado, 47, who grew up in the neighborhood and has been coming to the church for meals almost daily for the past 5 years, said he enjoys coming to the soup kitchen "because I like being around people."
But ultimately, Trinity's greatest asset is its ability to fill every plate.
"To me, food is food," Delgado said. "It doesn't matter."
