On Tuesday, Lila Finney stood outside the FoodChange West Harlem Community Kitchen on West 116th Street, dressed as if she might be going to Sunday services. As she does every month, the retired postal worker waited patiently with her push-cart, smiling under a fancy hat that blocked no sun – it was cloudy – and listening for her name to be called from a list. Soon it was, and Finney, 66, emerged from the food pantry five minutes later, her cart full of cereal boxes, canned soups, and fresh vegetables.
“I don’t understand why people are walking around hungry,” Finney said. “There are services all over…they give you crates of stuff.” FoodChange, a Food Bank of New York City subsidiary agency that has worked in Harlem for 25 years, used the 116th Street center to distribute 387,540 meals of pantry items and 102,000 hot dinners in 2006, according to the organization.
A life-long Harlem resident, Finney lives with her granddaughter and grandson who, like her, depend on free food. Every month, she visits pantries in her neighborhood nine times, including the Community Kitchen once. She even shares her stocks with needy neighbors and, occasionally, the church next door. “There’s no excuse to go hungry,” Finney said.
According to research by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, the Food Bank for New York City and city government statistics, Central Harlem residents should be hungry. In Manhattan last year, 32 percent of all residents had difficulty affording food; 71 percent of food kitchens and pantries in the borough reported feeding more people and 43 percent said they could not meet demand. Central Harlem, one of Manhattan’s poorest neighborhoods – 35 percent of the 118,00 people who live there are existing below the poverty line – is likely to be even worse; indeed, approximately two in five residents get food from emergency providers (the federal poverty level is $20,650 for a family of four). Like other inherently under-documented statistics, hunger in the community is practically impossible to calculate. According to anecdotal evidence, however, supply meets demand, at least for those willing to come and get it and for those who have the patience and will to deal with the Food Stamps bureaucracy.
FoodChange is not alone in helping to combat neighborhood hunger. One in five Central Harlem residents receives federal food stamps (as of 2006) and every major New York City food program is active locally, supplying or complementing the work of at least 24 pantries and soup kitchens operating in Community District 10.
The Emmanuel AME Church on 119th Street operates a twice-weekly food pantry, distributing some 240 hefty bags a week, plastic sacks of staples like rice, tomato soup, canned tuna and sweet potatoes. “Most people in Manhattan who go hungry don’t need to,” said Pastor Albert Turk, who leads the Emmanuel congregation. “There is always someplace where you can go find a meal.”
Sonny Morris agreed. “I don’t worry about food,” the 69 year-old-Harlemite said, sitting in a wheelchair in front of the Cecil Hotel on 118th Street, a homeless shelter.
A staffer at the Canaan Senior Service Center on Lenox Avenue, which provides bags of groceries to approximately 1,500 people each month, feels the same way. “People are still hungry in Harlem,” he said. “[But] you can go a whole month on pantry food…if you’re smart about it.” The staffer, who asked not to be named, said people only go hungry because of pride or preference for panhandling.
Emergency food providers like Emmanuel, Cecil and Canaan get help – both dollars and foodstuffs – from New York City’s major anti-hunger organizations: the United Way of New York City, City Harvest, and the Food Bank for New York City.
They have a different take on hunger in Central Harlem.
Rosario Valenzuela, United Way’s Director of the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP), a state effort, said that people are still hungry in the neighborhood, blaming recent cuts in the Federal Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). HPNAP will give $235,000 worth of food to 20 providers in West and Central Harlem this fiscal year, which compliments the independent non-profit’s local efforts to increase food stamp enrollment and additional emergency food provision.
City Harvest and the Food Bank for NYC also are worried about growing hunger in the city. A joint 2007 study found that 300,000 city residents accessed emergency food providers as budgets shrank and demand for food rose. City Harvest, a non-profit that collects and distributes unwanted food from restaurants, supermarkets and other sources, brings such groceries to Central Harlem, including Emmanuel, Cecil and FoodChange. Additionally, the Food Bank provides more than 250,000 meals every day, an unspecified amount of which come to Community District 10.
Some at pantries and kitchens also worry about local hunger, even though they are keeping up now. Daniel Hoose, 34, Director of FoodChange’s Harlem kitchen, said the list of clientele “grows more than it shrinks” and estimates the center has 30 to 100 new applicants a week. Sara Tinsley, Assistant Director of the Emmanuel pantry, is also concerned. “It seems like our lines are getting longer, not shorter,” the 71-year-old lifetime church member said. “People are still hungry [in Harlem].”
Central Harlem’s emergency food providers all supplement the most important federal hunger assistance: food stamps. One in five in Community District 10 receive the vouchers, which average $28 a week per person. However, many choose not to sign up; 46 percent of New York City residents who receive emergency food do not receive food stamps, according to a 2007 Food Bank study.
“I don’t even bother with it,” said Sue McDonald, a 57-year-old home attendant from Harlem who has gone on and off of food stamps. “It’s too much of a hassle.”
According to the NYC Coalition Against Hunger, roughly 700,000 in New York City are eligible to receive food stamps but do not. The main reason, they say, “is the complex bureaucracy involved in applying, which is frustrating and humiliating.” While Mayor Bloomberg has recently made the process easier by expanding office hours and filing some applications without paper, enrollment continues to stagnate.
For most people receiving food, hunger exists in Central Harlem, but it need not be. Elliott Carter, a sometimes-homeless 45-year-old, gets six to eight meals a week from various local kitchens and pantries.
“I’m hungry right now,” he said, waiting in line for a bag at Emmanuel. “As soon as I get home, I’m going to put something together,” referring to the friend’s apartment he has been staying at recently. Carter clutched a small black pamphlet in his left hand, “Community Services Booklet 2007,” which lists the Emmanuel pantry and all the others. “I’m thankful for this book…it pretty much keeps me afloat.”
