By ANGELA CAVE
The former customer service representative, who asked to remain anonymous, was laid off in April after 23 years of steady employment. Her $18 hourly salary was already stretched thin among rent for her Hicksville apartment, utility bills, gas for her car, health insurance and food. The latter, among other things, had to be cut out of her budget now that she is sustained by unemployment checks.
"It's horrible to be on the other side," she said. "If you're prepared for it, I don't think it's as devastating. But in this economy, how can you be prepared?"
Her unemployment income is too high for her to be eligible for food stamps, she said. To pay bills, she has cashed in her 401k, sold jewelry and used fans all summer, giving in to air conditioning only twice.
She has no cell phone, and tried to get out of her Verizon Fios contract, but the termination fee exceeded the monthly bill. She has shopped for cheaper apartments, but many don't accept unemployed people. She has sent resumes to about 20 different companies but there have been no offers, and she is taking computer courses through the Department of Labor.
The 5 percent of her food that doesn't come from the St. Ignatius pantry is given to her by friends and family. The nutritional value of the food from the church has been problematic because of health issues she asked the Herald not to disclose. "It was hard to begin with," she said. "But it is what it is, and without them, I don't know where I'd be."
Soaring gas and food prices exacerbate the problem, she said. "I think it's affecting everybody. The rug is just pulled out. Where do you go? What do you do? People need to realize that it's not just lower-class people that are suffering."
The demand on pantries that help people like her is increasing nationwide, while their supply of food is decreasing to sometimes crisis levels. New York has seen a 10 to 15 percent spike in demand and a decrease in donations among its eight food banks, said John Evers of the Food Bank Association of New York State. "This hit us like a wave," Evers said. "We're able to just keep pace."
New York may well be the hardest hit nationwide because of the low-income population of New York City, upstate cities and extreme rural areas, Evers said. And the need in downstate areas like Long Island is more pressing than that in many upstate areas because food is more expensive here. "This is hitting more people than ever before who thought, I'll never need that kind of service," he said. "It has caused us to re-evaluate how we're going to get that next pound of food. We're unabashedly going out and asking for more."
Long Island's food bank, Long Island Cares, can turn a $1 donation into $10 to $12 worth of food, Evers said. There were 259,000 hungry people on Long Island in 2006, according to a study. Calls to the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, a 60-year-old agency that helps with health care and nutritional security, have increased by about 25 percent in the past year, said council President Gwen O'Shea.
The summer food program, which feeds children who are eligible for free lunch during the school year, has increased by 15 percent on Long Island this year. In 2007, 79,801 Long Island children participated. Parents are starting to send their children to camp programs that provide free meals.
"The rise of food costs is covering so many different avenues where people get their food," O'Shea said. "Food pantries and soup kitchens are supposed to be the last resort. The programs still are antiquated and there are barriers that make it too difficult for folks to use them."
Joe Samodulski, director of the Center of Mercy at Hicksville's St. Ignatius, said that the number of food pantry clients increased by 6.5 percent between June 2007 and June 2008. Clients must have low incomes and live within parish boundaries. Between 80 and 85 percent of the clientele are undocumented immigrants living in two- to four-family houses, but Samodulski has seen an increase in middle-class American citizens. One client lost her job as a mortgage broker, and with it a $100,000 salary.
"It's the greatest need since the Depression, I really believe," Samodulski said. "There's no social safety net in this country as there used to be. People are coming to the churches as their safety net."
The shortage of food in the pantry in the past three or four months is becoming a crisis, Samodulski said. Rice, corn, black beans and cereal are staple foods, and recently the pantry's shelves contained a good supply of beans, but only a few small portions of rice and no corn or cereal. "I don't know if there is a temporary spike or if this is a reality we'll have to deal with for years to come," he said.
Samodulski said there is less available on the menus of Long Island Cares, which delivers orders to St. Ignatius twice each month, and Island Harvest, Long Island's food rescue network. A recent Island Harvest delivery held 18 crates of Fairway Market produce like lettuce and grapes. The Plainview market has donated 20 to 30 cases of produce to Island Harvest every other day for five or six years, said manager Ricardo Garcia. The economy has not really affected this. "We make sure that we always donate the most we could here," Garcia said.
But Island Harvest's president, Randi Dresner, said that some of its food suppliers can't afford to have excess product. And with a 63 percent increase in fuel costing them $1,000 to $1,500 more each month this year for a fleet of seven vehicles, Dresner also used the word crisis. "It means that we have to be more aggressive to find additional food," she said. "Our pressures are from all around."
This year, the 16-year-old agency, collected 14,000 backpacks of food for children in six school districts, raised $80,000 in coins from students in 80 schools and rescued close to 7 million pounds of food, Dresner said. The agency also educates the public, serves as a referral network for other aid organizations and works to prevent clients from becoming dependent. "To truly end hunger, you can't just give them a meal," Dresner said. Island Harvest trains more than 460 agencies on issues like food stamps and how to stretch a limited budget.
Volunteers recently ferried 30 pounds of rescued bread from Panera Bread in Hicksville to the Hicksville Youth Boys & Girls Club, which serves 30 to 35 children in the summer, said club director Tom Bruno. The club's food pantry, which occupies two small closets, serves community families.
Marc Levey has been volunteering three days a week for more than three years. He picks up food at seven to 10 donors each day and distributes it to about an equal number of agencies. On a recent food run, he collected 80 pounds of bread and pastries at the Mineola King Kullen, 35 pounds of bread at the Mineola Panera Bread, 215 pounds of bread products and 115 pounds of canned goods at the Garden City Pathmark, 72 pounds of crab, biscuits and potatoes at the Carle Place Red Lobster and 15 pounds of chicken at the Bellmore Zorn's. Most representatives of the donors said the economy has not affected donations.
Levey, a retired appliance salesman, dropped the donations off at the Gathering Place, a Mental Health Association activity center in Hempstead; Hope for Youth, a government-funded house for troubled adolescents in Bellmore; the food pantry at St. Martha's Roman Catholic Church in Uniondale; the Rockville Centre/Lakeview Community Action Program, an agency serving Rockville Centre, Valley Stream, Elmont, Lynbrook and Baldwin; and the non-denominational Vineyard Church in Rockville Centre.
The Community Action Program, part of the Economic Opportunity Commission, served about 73 people last month with programs ranging from housing and job assistance to a summer youth program and an emergency food pantry, said Sorangher Duran, a spokeswoman. Levey's delivery of a few bags of bread made Duran wonder aloud whatever happened to the pizza and canned goods Island Harvest used to bring.
Island Harvest donations make up less than 20 percent of Vineyard Church's food pantry, which feeds 150 Rockville Centre families each week, said volunteer Joe Sammut. The pantry budget and donations enable it to buy fresh produce like bananas, oranges, carrots and potatoes and fresh meat like beef, turkey and chicken. The increased demand has hit Vineyard, too, but supply has stayed stable, Sammut said. "That's been somewhat of a miracle."
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