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As federal support dries up, the lines outside New York City pantries stretch down blocks and around corners. Advocates say the city needs to ramp up funding for its emergency food assistance program to help offset cuts from Washington, D.C.
As councilmembers filed up and down the steps of City Hall last week carrying hefty lunch boxes, a coalition of local emergency food providers assembled on the stairs of the building to sound the alarm on the accelerating food insecurity crisis in New York City.
For local food pantries, a storm is on the horizon. President Trump’s proposed “Big, Beautiful Bill” has been rolling along the U.S. Senate floor, targeting food security programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The bill would shift $2.1 billion in costs onto New York State and local county governments, according to a memo sent out by Gov. Kathy Hochul last Friday.
Programs are already struggling. After the suspension of FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program in February, food banks across the nation began wondering how they would manage to keep their shelves stocked. Now facing additional cuts—$1 billion slashed from local food banks and schools and an additional $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)—providers are left with full tables, but empty plates.
New York receives around $30 million annually in supplemental funding through TEFAP to help meet the growing demand for food assistance across the state. As federal support shrinks, the lines outside New York City pantries stretch down blocks and around corners.
“People start lining up at our food pantry at 5 a.m. We don’t open until 9 a.m. We’re seeing parents push their children in their empty grocery carts,” said Alex Hughes, the director of hunger prevention and advocacy at Project Hospitality, a non-profit on Staten Island providing food and shelter.
Despite growing demand, funding for Community Food Connection (CFC), the city’s largest provider of emergency food assistance, has hardly changed since 2022. Mayor Eric Adams’ executive budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts July 1, proposes $57 million, down slightly from $60 million this current fiscal year.
But the City Council and anti-hunger advocates are pushing for $100 million for the program, citing the impact of federal cuts. More than 700 community kitchens rely on it.
Jilly Stephens, director of City Harvest, called that amount “a modest ask with outsized importance,” noting it would account for only .08 percent of the mayor’s proposed $115.1 billion budget.
At last week’s rally, organizers from City Harvest, Food Bank for New York City and United Way of New York City said local food pantry visits are only increasing, and it’s not looking like the numbers will subside any time soon. FeedNYC data shows there’s been an 85 percent increase in the number of average monthly visits to food banks across the city since 2019.
Pantry leaders were convinced the situation would simmer down after the pandemic, when need skyrocketed, but it’s only escalated. “In 2019, there were about 25 million visits to food pantries across the city. Last year, there were more than 46 million visits to those same organizations,” shared Stephens.
“If the funding is cut, I’ll be in trouble. I’m afraid of wasting away,” said Kenneth Johnson, a Lower East Side resident who gets meals at the Sirovich Senior Center because his fixed income doesn’t allow him to afford groceries from supermarkets. Johnson said he has been struggling to put on weight.
Louise Villacci, the CEO of Leading Individuals From Trauma, a nonprofit based on Long Island that provides support resources to individuals who have experienced trauma and struggle with food insecurity, said she and her business partner had to personally cover $600 of their usual food order last week due to federal cuts.
“The money is being frozen, If we want something we have to reach into our own pockets and buy the food,” Villaci explained.
Community organizations are already dealing with the effects of the FEMA funding pause: 97 groups across the city are owed over $1.3 million for food and emergency services they’ve already delivered, according to the president of United Way of New York City, Grace Bonilla.
Emmy Brett, the director of Greenpoint Hunger Program, criticized the mayor’s budget proposal, saying the administration’s efforts to prioritize public safety fall short of addressing the equally critical need to keep New Yorkers fed.
“The mayor is demanding that food justice organizations like the ones behind me tighten our belts. But what he does not understand is that we have been tightening our belts,” she said.
“A hungry city is not a safe city—a hungry city is a place where we have to lock up baby formula in cages in our grocery stores as people grow desperate for ways to feed their families,” Brett said. “That’s not New York.”
St. John’s Bread of Life
At 6:30 a.m., there was already a line at St. John’s Bread of Life, a food bank tucked between Malcolm X Boulevard and Patchen Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
On Tuesday, as record-breaking heat scorched New York City, pantry visitors endured the sweltering conditions to receive a hot meal and a warm “hello” from Sister Caroline Tweedy, the program’s executive director.
“This is a safety net for folks—a place where they can find people to walk alongside them as they begin their journey to stability,” said Tweedy. With over 35 years of social work experience, she said wanted to cultivate an organization that offered sustenance to struggling individuals, as well as an array of social services.
St. John’s Bread of Life is a spacious brick building with two floors. On the first floor, visitors cross a waiting lobby and enter a room in the back equipped with self-ordering machines, where they scan their membership cards to order their weekly supply of groceries.
They can choose from a range of options, from basic necessities like oil, rice, beans, and milk to more substantial proteins such as ground beef, canned tuna, and chicken. After placing their order, families sit in the lobby and patiently wait for their name to be called.
Upstairs, pantry guests have access to case management services, including legal assistance, medical support, and even a mail office for those who can’t receive correspondence at their place of residence.
“We have a relationship with Urban Justice, and our clinic is run by Care for the Homeless,” said Tweedy, adding that the pantry welcomes 9,000 guests a week in search of food and oftentimes social services.
Before the pandemic, St. John’s Bread of Life would distribute less than a million meals a year. Now Tweedy and her colleague Sister Marie Sorenson hand out 5 million plates of food annually.
“We anticipated that it would go back to normal after COVID,” Sorenson said. “But there is no normal anymore. And our funding has gone down this year. So it’s very unpredictable. We’re facing a lot of uncertainty.”
Still, they say they’ve never had to turn anyone away, thanks to heavy fundraising and extra help from organizations like United Way, which stepped in when the state’s Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program denied them a grant in 2023.
Tweedy doesn’t enjoy having to put limits on the number of food options for clients or the amount of times they can shop, but she says it’s a “necessary evil” at this point in order for their program to survive.
“People are just going to plunge further and further into poverty,” Sorenson said in response to proposed cuts. “We were founded to be that gap between running out of SNAP money or waiting for that next check, and now we’re people’s sole support. And that’s very scary.”
The Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” would not only halt funding to the federal program responsible for funding food pantries across the city, but also proposes the largest cut to SNAP benefits in history—eliminating $300 billion over the next 10 years.
The bill also imposes stricter eligibility requirements. Some recipients will need to prove they work 80 hours per month, and those who are unable to meet this demand after 90 days won’t be eligible for SNAP for three years. The change would disproportionately affect people with unpredictable work situations, chronic illness, or caregiving responsibilities, advocates say.
If passed, more than 300,000 households in New York would lose access to food assistance, warned Gov. Kathy Hochul. This additional rollback in federal support would put significant pressure on local food pantries that will not be equipped to handle a surge in visits.
“These are our brothers and sisters waiting in line down there, we need to treat them with dignity,” said Sorenson. “Why is our gaze always looking down at people who are struggling when we’re looking at a financial crisis? Why doesn’t it ever look up at the system?”
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