Food insecurity widespread on L.I. amid Covid-19 pandemic
By Peri Allen
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of investigative stories by Hofstra University Advanced Reporting students on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting Long Island.
I’m so hungry, I thought as my stomach grumbled. I was headed to volunteer with my brother at a weekly food share organized by Community Solidarity in Hempstead.
I had skipped breakfast that morning, and as lunchtime approached, I felt the hunger pangs as the thought of a fresh meal consumed me. I was cranky and agitated, and my brother could tell.
Too many people these days are feeling that sense of hunger, but far worse. Hunger is a daily reality for hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders. Food insecurity, caused when one does not have enough food for three nutritious meals a day, has only been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic for many.
As my brother and I pulled into the Hempstead Station parking lot to volunteer, I was overwhelmed by the mile-long line of cars that wrapped around the block, full of people waiting to receive food, most of whom depended on Community Solidarity as their only source of food for the week.
My hunger quickly subsided and was replaced by a feeling of shame for having complained minutes before. My hunger was nothing more than an inconvenience; for the people on that line, hunger was a constant.
Food insecurity in a pandemic
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, 259,000 people on Long Island were considered food insecure. According to Paule Pachter, the CEO of Long Island Cares, a food bank, that number has increased by 46 percent in the past nine months because of the pandemic.
As a result, local food banks are stretched to their limits. “There’s practically a 100 percent increase in the number of people who are coming to us for food,” said Randi Shubin Dresner, president of the Island Harvest food bank.
While food insecurity on Long Island is not new, record unemployment levels over the past nine months have exacerbated the issue. According to a brief released by Feeding America in October of this year, Nassau County was ranked fifth among the nation’s counties with the highest projected percentage change in food insecurity from 2018 to 2020. The food insecurity rate is expected to increase from 5.3 percent in 2018 to 9.8 percent by the end of 2020.
New York’s 3rd Congressional District, which stretches across parts of Suffolk County, Nassau County and Queens, is projected to see a 96 percent increase in its food insecurity rate.
One survey conducted by the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey for the week of Oct. 14 to Oct. 26 found that 54 percent of New Yorkers either personally experienced or had family members who lost employment income as a result of the pandemic.
Meeting increased demand
With demand for food growing rapidly, hunger relief organizations have had to act quickly to find effective solutions to meet such intense demand.
Island Harvest, a member of Feeding America, depends on donations from large wholesale distributors and supermarkets for 85 percent of the food that it distributes. At the onset of the pandemic, the supply chain immediately froze up because of panic buying in grocery store raids, leaving Island Harvest without enough food.
“Within 24 hours, we came up with a whole new program to take care of that particular challenge,” Dresner said.
Island Harvest started a purchasing program, funded by individuals, corporations and foundations in the surrounding community. That support network made it possible for Island Harvest to increase its food purchases by 500 percent, as well as assist in feeding over 400,000 families since March.
Island Harvest also started a home-delivery program for older adults, veterans and those who could not leave their homes because of the pandemic. The program operated in, and was funded by, the Town of Hempstead, and as of press time, it had fed 1,100 individuals and delivered 125,000 meals in the previous three months.
In addition to modifying and adapting its programs, Island Harvest joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture program Nourish New York, which provides funding across the state to emergency food providers like Island Harvest to buy agricultural products from struggling farmers. The program provides farmers with a market for their surplus food.
Long Island Cares has worked closely with the Town of Hempstead and other local municipalities to address the higher demand for food across the region. Along with the food bank’s six satellite locations, Long Island Cares operates 18 pop-up distribution centers in the Town of Hempstead.
With funding from local government contracts and donations from individuals and corporations, Long Island Cares has been able to increase food purchasing by 73 percent and distribution by 68 percent. “We’re able to meet the demands,” Pachter said.
With such a drastic increase in the amount of product being purchased, however, finding enough storage space to hold it all became one of the greatest challenges. According to Pachter, his organization receives four to six tractor-trailers’ worth of deliveries a week.
“In hindsight, we probably should have brought a second warehouse on in March or April,” said Pachter, who recently arranged for a second one at the New York Office of General Services in Brentwood.
“We foresee ourselves continuing at these levels for the next eight to 10 months,” Pachter said.
Dresner agreed, saying she has not seen this level of food insecurity since the 2008–09 recession. According to Feeding America, food insecurity rates did not peak until 2011 and did not return to pre-recession levels until 2018. “We believe that the same thing will happen now,” Dresner said.
A system of waste
Community Solidarity, a volunteer-run and -operated organization, is focused on feeding the hungry by addressing the issue of waste.
According to the group, 27 million pounds of food is thrown out on Long Island every night. This number is enough to feed every hungry person on Long Island 45 times over.
There has been “vastly more waste” during the pandemic, said Jon Stepanian, president and founder of Community Solidarity. He attributed this to the panic buying that occurred when Covid-19 initially hit. “The more people purchase food, the more food will be thrown own,” he said.
The closing of restaurants has also caused an increase in waste, which Stepanian said has likely doubled since last year. Food that would normally be purchased by restaurants from wholesale distributors is instead being held on the market, causing a large backlog of food that ends up being wasted.
According to the USDA, 30 to 40 percent of all of the nation’s food supply is wasted each year — that translates to 125 billion to 160 billion pounds of food. Retail supermarkets often over-purchase food and are incentivized to do so by tax write-offs. The food purchased is written off as a business expense. That is, there is no penalty if food is thrown out in a dumpster.
Because of the increase in waste during the pandemic, Community Solidarity has been able to rescue more food. Last year the organization collected 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of food a day. Now it rescues 8,000 to 9,000 pounds per day. The organization is only limited in its ability to collect food by the number of its volunteers.
Community Solidarity has rescued a little over 11 million pounds of food since the start of 2020 and nearly tripled its food distribution, going from feeding 5,700 people a week to over 15,000.
Community support
While the pandemic has forced many food banks and organizations to adapt their procedures to ensure the safety of staff members, volunteers and those in need, it appears people in the community are more eager than ever to volunteer.
When the pandemic first hit, Community Solidarity lost two-thirds of its volunteers for about two months. However, the decline did not last long, and the organization recently reported almost 6,000 active volunteers, a significantly higher number than last year.
Many of the volunteers have lost their jobs or been personally affected by Covid-19 and want to give back to their communities. They want to give others as well as themselves a sense of community and hope, said Stepanian. Some volunteers collect food as well.
“People crave to have a sense of community, they crave to have something they can rely on, and they crave to have something they can believe in,” he said, “and we were doing a much better job of that before this pandemic.”
According to Pachter, Long Island Cares receives a number of calls from people in the community looking to volunteer, but is limited in the number of volunteers that the organization can take on because of safety reasons.
Island Harvest has registered over 2,000 new volunteers since the pandemic first hit. “We literally could not have accomplished all that we have so far without that kind of support,” Dresner said.
