It is estimated that one in four New Yorkers now does not have enough money to eat healthily over the long term. How the pandemic is ramping up hunger and poverty in one of the richest cities in the world.
By Peter Mücke, ARD-Studio New York
The Masbia Soupkitchen in Flatbush is a mixture of soup kitchen and table. There are hot meals several times a day, but mostly take-away food. Alexander Rapaport opened Masbia – Hebrew for “to satiate” – here in 2009. The consequences of the financial crisis had hit this area of Brooklyn hard at the time.
“Since then, there have been repeated disasters, for example with Hurricane Sandy, when the rush here was great,” says Rapaport. “But there has never been anything like this before.” The demand has increased by 500 percent, and has been for months. “At the beginning of the pandemic, the line was sometimes hundreds of meters long and went down the whole street and around the corner.”
But then the local retailers complained. Now there is a new system. “People write an SMS with the word ‘food’ and then get an appointment. This gives us a digital queue – a handful of people come every ten minutes,” says Rapaport.
The money is often only enough for rent or food
Like Masooma Tahir. The mother of two came to New York from Pakistan shortly before the pandemic broke out. “What I get usually lasts for five to six days,” she says. “At first you only got an appointment every three weeks. Now every week. That helps a lot.”
Masooma’s husband now has a job at a gas station – but the money is not enough for both rent and food. So every week she at least fetches the staples like eggs and rice here. Just like Moshe Law, who lives in the neighborhood with his family. “You are not discriminated against here,” he says. And sometimes there is even a warm meal: “We really appreciate that.”
Corona exacerbates poverty
Hunger makes everyone the same. And so the Orthodox Jew Moshe stands in line for food together with the Muslim Masooma from Pakistan and the Christian Irma from Latin America. Irma says that she lost her job in the crisis. “The office where I was cleaning has closed because of Corona. Now they say I have to wait.” When better times came, she could have the job again: “Maybe.”
Like Irma, around a million New Yorkers lost their jobs during the crisis – and with them often their livelihoods too. Unemployment benefits are usually not enough to pay the horrific New York rents. The last resort for many is to go to facilities like the Masiba Soupkitchen, where Julie Larosa volunteers seven days a week.
“Everyone comes here,” she says. “Mothers with ten children. Single old people. Some people are so proud that they only come when it’s dark so that nobody can see them. We care for everyone here. At least we try to do that.”
In spring, at the height of the Corona wave in New York, the rush was so great that many soup kitchens and tables ran out of food. The city is now investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the programs – even though most soup kitchens have so far been largely funded by donations.
“Impressive job” in the pandemic
“New York City did an impressive job there,” says Nick Freudenberg. He is a professor at City University. “The city quickly started various programs: on the one hand, it gave money for the soup kitchens, and on the other, it made sure that the schools, even when they were closed, distributed meals for the children and their families.” Third, a delivery service has been set up for the elderly, the disabled and for all those who are afraid of being infected with Corona when they leave the house.
As Director of the Urban Food Policy Institute, Freudenberg has been dealing with the hunger problem in one of the richest cities in the world for years. It is important to realize that the problem is not new: “Even before the pandemic, up to 1.2 million people in New York were suffering from unsecured food supplies.”
Only higher wages will help in the long term
Freudenberg assumes that there are now at least two million who do not have enough money to be able to eat healthily over the long term. That’s almost one in four New Yorkers. “This insecure supply in New York and across the United States is because people don’t have enough money to buy food, pay rent, and finance their health care. They don’t have jobs to finance it all,” says the scientist.
One and a half million New Yorkers are therefore dependent on soup kitchens, tables and other programs. Valuable and necessary offers, which are not sustainable in the long run: “The long-term solution would be that people earn enough money to buy their food in the store.” An emergency system like the one the city has built is the answer to a crisis. “But it won’t solve the problems we’ve had in New York City for so long. This insecure food supply existed before the pandemic – and we fear it will continue afterwards.”
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