Testimony: Addressing Food Insecurity in New York City
Debipriya Chatterjee
Thank you, Chairpersons Ayala, Hudson, and Mealy and to the members of the General Welfare Committee for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Debipriya Chatterjee, and I am a Senior Economist at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), a long-time nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting economic opportunity for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. We use research, advocacy, and direct services to champion a more equitable city and state.
Today my testimony is going to focus on the state of food insecurity in New York City. For twenty years and continuing, CSS has been conducting a unique survey of opinions and hardships facing low-income New Yorkers in its Unheard Third Survey. Every survey, we ask people the following questions:
- Did you receive free food or meals from a food pantry, soup kitchen, meal program, family, or friend because you didn’t have enough money to buy food?
- Did you often skip meals or go hungry because there wasn’t enough food to buy food?
Based on their ‘yes/no’ responses, we gauge the extent of their food hardship. If a household answers ‘yes’ to both questions, we describe them as experiencing ‘severe’ food hardship; if they respond affirmatively to only one question, we describe them as experiencing ‘moderate’ food hardship. Our analysis of these responses shows that food insecurity is persistent and pervasive.
In 2022, 30 percent of all respondents said they experienced food hardship. Over half of low-income New Yorkers endured food hardship in 2022. Around 20 percent of these households endured ‘severe’ food hardship.
Food insecurity is at a crisis level for the city’s Hispanic/Latinx residents: 60 percent of low-income Hispanic/Latinx New Yorkers reported experiencing food hardship; 26 percent of Hispanic/Latinx New Yorkers reported experiencing ‘severe’ food hardship. Almost half--48 percent--of Hispanic/Latinx women reported experiencing food hardship.
We know that the greatest casualty of food insecurity are the children whose physical, mental and cognitive development can be imperiled by lack of adequate nutrition. And yet, 61 percent of low-income households with children reported experiencing food hardship.
Testifying to the historical legacy of marginalization and continued gender inequities, low-income households headed by single females had the highest rates of food hardship with 58 percent reporting that they often endured hunger or had to seek out food donations.
Since prevalence of food hardship is intimately connected with prevalence of poverty, it is, perhaps unsurprising that respondents from the Bronx had the highest rate of food insecurity—36 percent—while Queens residents had the lowest rates (29 percent).
Across the city, for every demographic and socio-economic group, we found the same pattern over time: Food insecurity rates increased during the pandemic year (2020), but government assistance in 2021 helped alleviate food hardship for most New Yorkers. Food hardship rates increased to their pre-pandemic levels as pandemic-era assistance programs were phased out in 2022. The expiration of the Emergency Allotments program for SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps) at the end of February was the last of the expanded assistance programs to end, even as continued high inflation, especially in food prices, is pushing these households up against the wall.
Our data shows that even among SNAP recipients, 57 percent experienced food hardship. To add insult to injury, this week the House Speaker was in our city advocating to pile on even more onerous work requirements on SNAP recipients, even though research shows that adding work requirements does little to improve long-term labor market attachment and outcomes and mostly just inconveniences recipients. The proposed measure would throw 736,000 New Yorkers off SNAP statewide, worsening the food insecurity crisis further.
So, what can we do? I would like to reiterate some of the policy recommendations that would help improve the crisis.
- The City administration needs to increase and baseline funding to adequately staff HRA’s Department of Social Services (DSS) to ensure that SNAP applicants receive their benefits with minimal delays. A “timeliness rate” of 49 percent in February, even if a big improvement from the rate of 19 percent in December, 2022, is a cause for concern when over 60 percent of children in low-income households go hungry.
- The City should also increase and baseline funding to a total of $59 Million for the Community Food Connection (CFC), formerly known as the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP).
- Finally, it should invest an additional $200 million in capital funding for the continued redesign of middle and high school cafeterias to make them more modernized and culturally inclusive.
With the state budget still being negotiated, the City Council still has a chance to pressure Albany to pass the following legislation that would effectively address poverty and food insecurity.
- The expanded and reformed Empire State Child Credit: We now have rigorous research evidence showing that the federal expanded Child Tax Credit was a powerful force in alleviating poverty, especially child poverty, and that parents spent the extra cash in buying much needed basic necessities. Even as Washington plays politics with people’s lives, New York can step up and do the right thing by extending the ESCC to our youngest resident (aged less than 4 years), and by eliminating the minimum income requirement which excludes the lowest income families, those most in need, from receiving the credit. They can even go one step further and increase the credit amount to $1,500 per child, allow families to receive the credit irrespective of citizenship status, and pay out the credit quarterly or monthly to help families smooth out expenses.
- Increasing the cash assistance grant amounts: These amounts have not been adjusted for inflation in over two decades. It is long overdue for cash assistance amounts to reflect the current cost-of-living, especially in an expensive city like New York.
I would like to close by quoting the amazing Chef Jose Andres: “Food is national security. Food is economy. It is employment, energy, history. Food is everything.”
Thank you for this opportunity. Please feel free to reach out to me at dchatterjee@cssny.org if you have any questions or would like to discuss further.