Too many mouths to feed
By Rob Sgobbo
October 1, 2009
Mirta Roman stood at the doorway of the cafeteria with a scowl on her face. Twenty-three people were lined up, single-file, anxiously waiting to enter. “Remember, we go in by threes!” she said, as three men shuffled past her to the counter. There sat four metal trays, each containing a different food. Beans, chicken, rice and salad, each served onto Styrofoam plates by the chef. “Hurry up!” Roman said, “You only have a few minutes to eat!”
Roman has been working at St. Anne’s Corner of Harm Reduction on Walton Avenue in Mott Haven for the past two years. Originally created as a needle exchange for drug users and a counseling center for HIV patients, the clinic expanded three years ago to include a soup kitchen that serves lunch five days a week.
St. Anne’s expansion of food services came at a necessary time in the South Bronx, where the current economic recession is having a particularly brutal effect upon the community. With unemployment in the borough having risen to 13.2 percent last month, many South Bronx residents are struggling to pay for groceries after their jobs were terminated or their hours cut. As a result, many of the newly unemployed, who prior to their layoffs were living paycheck to paycheck, are now finding themselves on the soup kitchen line.
Roman originally came to St. Anne’s not as an employee, but as a patron, asking for food on the same lunch line she now coordinates. Three years ago, she suddenly lost her job as a sales clerk when her company downsized, and soon was evicted from her apartment due to late rent checks. “It was a very bad time,” she said. “Being here, I see so many people who were in the same boat as me.” Having limited job prospects with no high school diploma, Roman passed the time volunteering for St. Anne’s, working at their HIV clinic. She was hired as a full-time employee a year later. “I see a lot of me in the people coming up to eat here,” she said.
Roman said she knows almost everyone who eats lunch at St. Anne’s. She pointed out the daily regulars, who receive a meal ticket after attending the clinic’s morning counseling or job-search sessions. As Roman joked with one patron about not having desserts available at the soup kitchen, she identified three newcomers eating at one of the room’s long white tables. “This is the first time they’ve been here,” she said. “One of them told me they lost their job. Now they’re homeless. There’s a lot of that lately. More than usual. Sometimes we might have close to 40 people trying to come to lunch,” she said.
St. Anne’s is one of the 1,200 soup kitchens and food pantries that serve New York City’s increasingly “food insecure” population during the current economic recession. According to The Food Bank of New York City, a non-profit that distributes food to providers throughout the five boroughs, individuals or homes considered to be “food insecure” are those having difficulty affording food for either themselves or their families by their own means. Since 2000, the non-profit has conducted several studies measuring the rise of food insecurity throughout the city. In December 2007, 3.1 million New Yorkers were food insecure. In November 2008, near the height of the recession, The Food Bank of New York City estimated 4 million people were food insecure, making up 48 percent of the city’s total population.
The effects of the current economic downturn are startling, with disastrous results for the city’s poorer regions, particularly the South Bronx. According to New York City’s Department of City Planning, more than 55 percent of Community Board 2’s population, the district where St. Anne’s is located, is currently receiving public assistance. This compares to 42 percent of the region’s population in 2000. Of Community Board 2’s population receiving public assistance, the Department of City Planning estimates approximately half of them have at one time received food from either a soup kitchen or pantry.
Mildred Matos Roure, who is 55, said she is well aware of the realities of the current economic recession. One of the few women waiting on line at St. Anne’s to receive lunch, she is homeless and without a job. Having lived in the Webster Houses public housing unit in Morrisania for 20 years, she claims her constant complaints over the need for her door to be repaired, and a late rent payment, resulted in her being evicted from her apartment a year ago. While she regretted losing her apartment, Roure said things “got really crazy” when she lost her job around the same time. Having worked as a secretary at a car rental service, she first had her hours cut, then eventually her position, when the company started laying off employees. She now receives $250 each month from the former Food Stamps program, now called the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. “It’s just not enough money to live. It really isn’t. I have to come here to get a real meal,” Roure said. Having lived in a shelter on Tremont Avenue for the past six months, she said the stark conditions have led to depression, and more recently, drug use. “I can’t believe this happened to me,” Roure said, as she started crying. “Where do people like me go? At this point, I’m just traumatized. I would always look at those people in the food line and just say to myself, ‘Thank God I’m not one of them.’ Now look at me. I never thought I would become one of those people,” she said.
For many individuals and families with incomes hovering near the poverty line, unplanned unemployment or a cut of hours has pushed many into food insecurity. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as of November of last year, 73 percent of New Yorkers coming from households making less than $25,000 were food insecure, up from 49 percent in 2003. With the greatest number of jobs being shed from January through February of 2009, SNAP, at times the sole source of public assistance for individuals without children, showed an enrollment increase of almost 2 million people nationwide since last November.
Employment in the South Bronx has been hit particularly hard by the recession. Last month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing the latest trends in industry job cuts. Since December 2007, manufacturing and construction have continued to see jobs and hours cut. Many individuals working in these sectors, according to the report, live by hourly wages, thus forcing people to take an unanticipated cut in take-home income. In Community Board 2, both of these industries combined make up more than 25 percent of the current workforce, compared to 17 percent citywide. The high concentration of hard-hit industries in the region has left many individuals and families, whose wages prior to the recession had hovered on average less than $25,000 a year, struggling to pay for daily expenses.
James Johnson said he was happy to be making his wage of $11.53 per hour for a small construction company in the South Bronx. When he was laid off in October of last year, he had little savings to pay for rent or buy groceries. Within two months, Johnson fell behind on rent payments, and was evicted from public housing. Today, at 44, he lives in a shelter on 152nd Street, which he said, “has been really rough.” Johnson explained his current income and expenses, which in addition to Medicaid benefits he includes $200 each month from SNAP. “When the money comes in,” he said, “I go to the grocery store and buy cereal, Hot Pockets, soup… stuff like that.” While Johnson said he would love to cook “a real meal” at the shelter, all that is available to residents are microwave ovens. “You have to have food that won’t go bad. You can’t actually cook anything there,” he said. Six bags of groceries cost him $150, leaving him $50 for any other expenses for the rest of the month. “This is why I come to food kitchens,” Johnson said. “You can’t make a hot meal in the shelter. You can’t get food like this. I just go from kitchen to kitchen… try to see where I can get the next meal.”
While staff members at St. Anne’s said they are happy to help those who have recently become unemployed, several workers were anxious about the recent influx of new patrons. Bart Majoor, St. Anne’s clinical director, said, “Over the past few months we’ve been filled to the top. We were originally open four days a week, and now we go five. And we still have to turn people away. Unless we get more money, or get more food, we won’t be able to handle more people coming in.”
“We have had to increase commodities being given to food pantries and soup kitchens to work towards meeting the demand,” said David Grossnickle, the director of food sourcing for the Food Bank of New York City, from whom St. Anne’s receives a monthly grocery supply. “We’ve been lucky enough to have our food donations stay consistent through the recession, and that it hasn’t decreased. But the food available hasn’t kept up with the demand,” he said.
While no workers or patrons at St. Anne’s know how long the recession will last, many patrons have expressed their belief in resilience during today’s hard times. While he ate his lunch, Johnson wrote in a journal that he said, “never leaves my side… it keeps me motivated to live.” On an entry dated last August, he had written, “Life’s not always straightforward. Just when you thought you were getting ahead in certain areas of your life there is another complication. These surprises can test your patience… Stay in the moment and don’t allow stress to affect your achievement and today’s goals, whatever they are. “
