BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Nearly half the New Yorkers who can’t afford enough food are working, according to a new report from the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.
The report said 450,000 city residents lived in households that included at least one person who was employed but “food insecure." Forty-eight percent of adults between the ages of 15 and 65 were working but unable to consistently afford enough to eat.
Citywide, 1.4 million people live in food insecure households, according to the coalition.
The data prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to call on federal officials to implement stronger policies in addressing the issue of hunger.
“What’s happened, in fact, is that that wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. And we’re rewarding, in terms of the policies of this nation, we’re rewarding wealth instead of work,” he said Tuesday at St. John’s Bread and Life in Brooklyn.
“This is not an acceptable status quo — it just isn’t. And everyone has to be a part of changing it. Obviously, we need very different policies in Washington and Albany. We have to keep making more changes here in the city.”
The mayor packed grocery bags at the Bed-Stuy pantry before calling on the private sector to make changes in helping workers obtain better wages.
In addition to the need for adjustments on federal and city levels, the mayor emphasized the importance of an increase in minimum wage and workers’ benefits.
“But the private sector has to step up, because this state of affairs can’t go on. It just can’t. So we have to work on all those fronts,” he said.
Joel Berg, executive director of the coalition, joined the mayor’s call for a $15 minimum wage and cited cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as a contributor to the hunger “epidemic.”
The average SNAP benefit in the city declined from $162 per person per month in December 2012 to about $148 in September 2015, the coalition found.
“The city does an amazing job funding pantries and kitchens … but it’s dwarfed when the federal government isn’t doing its job,” Berg said.
Other findings from the coalition’s report include:
• One in five New York City children lived in food insecure homes from 2012 to 2014.
• An estimated 164,695 seniors suffered from food insecurity from 2012 to 2014.
• The city’s food pantries and soup kitchens saw a 5 percent increase in demand in 2015, a 7 percent increase in 2014 and a 10 percent increase in 2013, along with additional rises from 2009 to 2012.
• 80 percent of food pantries and soup kitchens in the city reported that SNAP cuts increased the number of their clients and/or food needs.
• Brooklyn had the highest number of food insecure residents (569,659), but the Bronx had the highest percentage, with more than one-quarter of Bronxites (29.07 percent) struggling to get enough to eat.
Another report released Tuesday from the Food Bank for New York City found that New York’s emergency food system could be better served with additional resources invested on local and national levels.
“So many negative stereotypes were propagated about lower-income folks over the years, but one thing that is finally breaking through today is people are working and that’s not enough,” de Blasio said.
Despite cutbacks in SNAP, the city has an “obligation” to keep working, the mayor said, adding that solutions include a higher minimum wage, better benefits, affordable housing and services like pre-K and afterschool programs that would lessen the burden for working families.
“We must have action in both Albany and Washington if we really want to have a thriving middle-class city again,” he said.
