Running Out Of Food A Concern For Half Of NYers, Survey Shows

NEW YORK — Some New Yorkers will spend close to $100 a head on Thanksgiving dinner, but many more may not have enough food to put on the table, a report released Wednesday shows.

More than half of New Yorkers at least sometimes worry about running out of food or actually find their cupboards empty, according to data from the Poverty Tracker, a citywide survey by Columbia University and the Robin Hood Foundation.

That's just one illustration of widespread food insecurity in the city that forces many New Yorkers to use food pantries or federal assistance, the survey shows.

Families struggling to make ends meet are sometimes forced to make "trade-offs," such as skipping a meal to cover other costs, said Sarah Oltmans, the Robin Hood Foundation's managing director for health.

"If they’re going to pay for their rent, then they might not have enough money for food, or they may not have enough money for medical bills, or medication," Oltmans said.

The Poverty Tracker surveys samples of New Yorkers every three months by asking them two questions: How often they worry about running out of food, and how often they actually run out, before they have enough money to buy more.

Three years of the survey showed 52 percent of New Yorkers worried about exhausting their food supply or actually ran out of food in at least one year. That was the case for 24 percent of the respondents in all three years, the report shows.

About 30 percent of New Yorkers — nearly 2.6 million people — each year report running out of food, and about 5 percent say they run out of food often, the report says.

The problem is especially dire in The Bronx — for 29 percent of the borough's residents, food dried up often or sometimes in all three years that they were surveyed. That was the case for just 8 percent of Staten Islanders, 13 percent of Manhattanites, 14 percent of Brooklynites and 15 percent of Queens residents, the report shows.

There's also a large racial disparity — 22 percent of black New Yorkers and 33 percent of Hispanic residents ran out of food in all of three consecutive years, the report says, compared with just 4 percent of white people.

Safety-net programs catch many people who struggle with food insecurity. About 10 percent of New Yorkers are served by food pantries, the report says, while more than 20 percent use the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, in the course of a year.

But having a job doesn't necessarily stop New Yorkers from facing hunger. About half of those who benefitted from food pantries reported working at least some in the years that they turn to the pantries, according to the report. And a quarter of full-year workers ran out of food in at least one year, the report says.

The city's rate of food insecurity — which is higher than the nation's overall — has stayed fairly flat despite economic gains and lower unemployment, Oltmans said.

"Especially when you look at some of the percentages of people who are struggling with these issues, you realize that it’s much more widespread than just a small number of people who are living in poverty," Oltmans said.

(Lead image: New Yorkers receive Thanksgiving turkeys at the Reaching Out Community Services food pantry in Brooklyn in November 2017. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)