NYCCAH's Joel Berg on the Food Stamp Challenge

“We are extremely grateful that Council Member Gioia has taken on this vital challenge. He has long been a leader in the fight against hunger in New York City, but now he is going the extra mile by experiencing first-hand some of the difficulties faced by hard-pressed food stamp recipients.”

“None of us will spend the week pretending that we will truly know what it’s like to be hungry. However, this exercise will provide a stark demonstration of the extremely difficult choices that low-income New Yorkers are forced to take on a daily basis.”

NYC Councilman Takes Food Stamp Challenge

As covered by NY1, the Daily News, and ABC7, New York City Councilman Eric Gioia is taking the Food Stamp Challenge and living for one week on $28.25 for groceries - the average weekly allotment per person in New York City. He will be joined by New York City Coalition Against Hunger Executive Director Joel Berg. They are starting today, Thursday, May 10, and will limit their budgets to $1.30 or below per meal. Councilman Gioia warned, "Often the cheapest food isn't the healthiest." Those taking the challenge hope to raise awareness and increase funding of the Food Stamp Program as Congress sets to consider the new Farm Bill, which delineates the size, scope, and cost of the Food Stamp Program for the next five years. Berg is quoted in the news as saying, ""We know that food stamps used to last three to four weeks. Now they last two to three weeks and then the recipients start showing up at soup kitchens."

Food Aid and the Farm Bill

An op-ed article in the New York Times examines the proposed farm bill and its possible effects on food-aid recipients and farmer's markets. Food-aid recipients are frequent customers at farmer's markets, but new government proposals to increase the fruit and vegetable supply for poor people could transpose their business to supermarkets, which continue to be more convenient. Food-aid recipients receive plastic debit cards with which to pay for food, and most farmer's markets don't take plastic. The dilemma seems to be that increased fresh produce for poor people will actually hurt small farmer's and local farmer's markets. However, there is a way around this, if farmer's are supplied with card readers and other means to make shopping at farmer's markets more convenient, then it is beneficial all around. Urge legislators to support the Farmers’ Market Promotion Program, Community Food Projects, and other programs in the farm bill which can make this a reality.

Kids and Hunger

Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, was recently quoted in an article in the New York City Independent Media Center's IndyKids, a publication geared toward kids in 4th to 8th grades. The article discusses the serious and increasing problem of hunger in the United States and also low minimum wage as a contributing cause of food insecurity. Berg is quoted as saying, “Childhood hunger is one of the biggest unnatural disasters in America. But unlike a natural disaster, you can prevent it from getting worse.”

NYC's Middle Class - Heading for Extinction?

New York City's Middle Class is shrinking rapidly. According to a study by the Brookings Institution released summer 2006, the City had the smallest proportion of middle class families out of any of the country's metropolitan areas. The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy conducted a survey of New York leaders to try and discover ways to strengthen and increase middle-income families in the city. Among other enlightening results, the survey found that while the City's median family income is just over $49,000 a year, those surveyed think $75,000 to $135,000 is the actual amount it takes a family of four to have a middle-class standard of living.

"Making America Stronger: U.S. Food Stamp Program"

A video released by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities "commemorates the 30th anniversary of the of the reforms achieved by the Food Stamp Act of 1977 by telling the story of how food stamps dramatically reduced the extent of severe hunger in our country, how they continue to help Americans in need, and how this essential program can achieve still more." The video offers an interesting look at the history of the Food Stamp program, it also discusses some of the many reasons that make the program an absolute necessity.

Mayoral Food Policy

According to an article in today's New York Times, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, "has taken on more food issues, and provoked more controversy, than any New York mayor before him." The piece explores Mayor Bloomberg's past and present food policies, highlighting such actions as banning smoking in restaurants, banning trans fat, improving school lunches, and, most recently, forcing restaurants to post calorie counts on menus. Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, Joel Berg, is quoted, “The tools are now all in place to achieve significant progress, but it depends on whether the city decides to use the tools...It took Nixon to go to China, maybe it’ll take a Republican billionaire to have real progress on hunger and poverty.”

A Whopper of a Policy

Although it does not go into effect until July 1, the recently passed Board of Health rule requiring restaurants to list calorie data next to each menu item in the same size print is already causing some noticeable changes. When the rule goes into effect, it will only apply to restaurants that already list nutritional information for their standardized menus, thus mostly affecting fast food establishments. In response, some fast food chains, including Wendy's and White Castle, have stopped posting nutritional information in their establishments in order to avoid compliance with the rule. Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, personally witnessed the trend of nutritional informational removal. Berg had this to say:

"As you know, the Department of Health's new regulation requiring restaurants to have clearer nutritional labeling applied to chains that had some information already posted prior to the implementation. There were some media reports that certain chains actually took down their already-posted nutrition information before the deadline in order to avoid having to comply. But now I have seen it with my own eyes: the Burger King right next to the NYCCAH office on Beaver Street did in fact recently take down their large nutrition information poster. So, unfortunately, the City's good-intentioned effort had the practical impact of reducing the nutrition information available to consumers.

An interesting Burger King fact: its costs LESS to get a medium fries and medium soda than to get a small fries and a small soda, because the "value meals" only come in the medium or large sizes. The cash registers literally won't ring up smaller sizes for the value meals.

Yet, according to nutritional information available at the Burger King web site (but not on their wall), the nutritional difference between medium and small sizes is massive. A double cheeseburger is 500 calories and 29 grams of fat, not counting fries and a drink. Small fries are 230 calories and 13 grams of fat and a small coke is 140 calories and 0 grams of fat. Medium fries are 360 calories and 18 grams of fat and a medium coke is 200 calories and 0 grams of fat.

Thus, a double cheeseburger with small fries and a small coke equal 870 calories and 42 grams of fat; a double cheeseburger with medium fries and a medium coke equal 1,060 calories and 47 grams of fat. Given that USDA recommends that the average adult should eat about 2,000 calories per day, the small meal would comprise 44% of that, but the medium meal would be 53% of the daily caloric needs.

Even worse, large fries equal 500 calories and a large coke equals 290 calories. A double cheeseburger, large fries, and a large coke would be 1,290 calories, or 64% of a person's daily caloric needs.

To further stress the point, the "king"-size fries equals 600 calories and a "king"-size coke equals 390 calories. Thus a double cheeseburger, king-size fries, and a king-size coke would be 1,490 calories, meaning that this one meal would equal 75% of a person's caloric need for a a whole day. No wonder they don't want to post nutritional information. Perhaps it's time for a revised City law/regulation to require restaurants to have real nutrition information easily available to their customers."

NYCCAH Front Page

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger graces the cover of the April 1st edition of The Nonprofit Times Magazine. The cover article discusses the growing use of technology in the nonprofit world. It highlights organizations, like NYCCAH, which "have truly championed technology and used it to grow their organizations." The article specifically touches on the Coalition's website and innovative mapping technology, as well as - the Hunger Blog. JC Dwyer, NYCCAH's Director of Programs and National Service, headed the pioneering mapping project. The website is designed and maintained by the excellent Dave Hsia, the Coalition's Development and Technology VISTA.

Increased Food Quality?

New York might be on its way to getting its first statewide Food Policy Council, as reported today by the Daily Intelligencer. The Council would be in charge of coordinating sustainable-food efforts and community-supported agriculture efforts that would bring local and organic produce into lower-income shops, such as bodegas. Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, Joel Berg, had a somewhat skeptical response, "The question is, is it just going to be a food-quality and local-food focus, or is it going to have a key anti-poverty focus?I hope this really doesn't end up a yuppie thing."

Mayor Announces New Anti-Poverty Pilot Program

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new anti-poverty pilot program that will award poor families up to $5,000 a year for taking such steps as visiting the dentist, attending parent-teacher conferences, or having a child with perfect school attendance. The program will track the progress of the 2,500 randomly selected families against 2,500 other randomly selected families not receiving rewards.

Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, had this to say about the program, "It's certainly good to experiment with new efforts such as this. However, it is important to keep in mind that the 2,500 people to be impacted represent less than two-tenths of one percent of the 1.7 million New Yorkers in poverty. We also need far bolder efforts to create large numbers of living wage jobs and make food, health care, housing, and child care, more affordable for low-income New Yorkers."

NYCCAH Featured

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger is featured in the Foundation Center's Philanthropy News Digest. As this week's NPO (Non-Profit Organization) Spotlight, NYCCAH's mission, programs, and website are briefly described and highlighted.

How to Solve NYC's Growing Hunger Problem

Yesterday, NYCCAH Executive Director Joel Berg testified before the New York City Council Hearing on the Budget of the Human Resources Administration (HRA). HRA is the city department tasked with getting valuable federal benefits like food stamps to needy New Yorkers, and is a key partner in ending hunger in NYC. Read Berg's testimony here.

Welfare at 43-year low

According to an article in the Daily News, city officials reported yesterday that the number of New Yorkers on Welfare hit a 43-year low last month. While some city officials are attempting to credit the drop to the Bloomberg adminstration, poverty experts look to other telling statistics for an explanation. Joel Berg, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Hunger, was quoted as saying, "We are moving far more people from welfare to the streets." Just last month, the Coalition for the Homeless reported that the average number of families entering shelters reached an all-time high of 9,287.

Assembly Proposes Even Larger Funding Hike for Feeding Charities

The New York State Assembly just passed a bill that proposes $2 million more than Governor Eliot Spitzer's previously proposed increase to the funding for New York State's more than 2,000 soup kitchens and food pantries. The Coalition Against Hunger issued a press release on the Assembly's very welcome, proposed increase to the State Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP).

As with Mayor Bloomberg's plan to boost New York City residents' participation in the Food Stamp program, his plan to decrease the number of homeless families has also floundered and hit a wall. The Coalition for the Homeless released its eighth-annual "State of the Homeless" report. As part of its assessment, the report analyzes Mayor Bloomberg's five-year homeless plan at its midpoint and proposes reforms that would achieve the plan's goals. Instead of decreasing the number of homeless families from 8,850 at the plan's inception on August 2004 to the projected 7,400 by this point, the number of homeless families has increased to last month's record total of 9,287. The report attributes the rise in homeless families mostly to the City's flawed Housing Stability Plus program (HSP), which is meant to move families into permanent housing by providing them declining rent subsidies. The report found that the number of homeless families moved to permanent housing fell by 11% last year, and that HSP moved fewer families in its second year than in its first.

2 out of 3...

The New York Nonprofit Press published an article in its March issue outlining the budgets of Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Spitzer, and President Bush, and also nonprofit, human service provider advocates' subsequent reactions to these budget proposals. Advocates responded fairly well to the proposals of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer, acknowledging that they will still need to ask for more. Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, was quoted as saying, "We are delighted. Governor Spitzer is leading with both his head and his heart. We hope the legislature provides at least as much funding as he proposed."

President Bush's budget was not so well received; in fact, it was bashed by advocates on all sides. The Coalition on Human Needs characterized it as "Less Help for People in Need; Needless Help for Those with High Incomes." NYCCAH's Joel Berg commented, "For the second year in a row, President Bush's budget has proposed eliminating the USDA Commodity Supplemental Food Program. That would take food away from about 400,000 low-income seniors and children nationwide, including approximately 35,000 in New York State." Berg also criticized the President's proposed changes to federally-funded programs that would have dire effects on the Food Stamp program among others.

Food Deserts

CNN recently released a video report entitled "Urban Food Deserts" on the lack of quality food choices in some urban areas, most often in low-income neighborhoods. The video addresses this problem as it pertains to residents of Chicago; however, it applies to many urban areas, New York City included. This past fall, NYCCAH published a report and interactive mapping study on the lack of access to nutritious food in the low-income neighborhoods of New York.

Few Take Advantage of the Food Stamp Program

As many as 700, 000 people are eligible for food stamps in New York City, yet very few have applied. According to a recent FoodChange study covered by the Brooklyn Heights Courier, over one quarter of those who are entitled to but do not receive food stamps are immigrants. Many immigrants are afraid that application for food stamps may somehow endanger their immigration status, even though their status information cannot be shared with the immigration office. Low participation in the Food Stamp program can also be widely attributed to the current application process, which continues to be daunting, confusing, and overly complicated.

Advocates confront Sec. Johanns at Annual Conference

A special post from NYCCAH Executive Director Joel Berg:

Last year, at an annual anti-hunger conference in DC, I asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (a member of President's Bush cabinet) why the President was supporting ever-more tax cuts for the mega-rich while poverty and hunger in America soared. He responded that I didn't understand economics and that tax cuts fueled economic growth so much that they reduced the deficit.

But most interestingly, when USDA released the transcript of the exchange to the media, my comments were mis-transcribed in a way that may have given the impression that I supported the Bush tax cuts. Given that I talk fast and was not using a microphone, it is possible that the mis-transcription was an honest mistake on the part of the transcription service hired by USDA.

At this year's conference, I tried a different tact, attempting to ask Johanns a question which I guessed (correctly, as it turns out) that he wouldn't really be able to answer.

Some background: in New York State and three other large states (Texas, California, and Arizona), people have to be finger-printed in order to obtain food stamps. In other words, people are treated like criminals for the crime of being poor.

It is not coincidental that people never have to be finger-printed to obtain other types of USDA aid that goes to less poor (and sometimes even rich) people such as farm subsidies, money to ranchers for conservation programs, and payments to rural businesspeople. Given that those other programs have plenty of fraud, the double-standard for food stamps proves that finger-printing food stamps applicants is more about dehumanizing poor people than it is about a legitimate attempt to reduce fraud equally in all government programs.

So a few days ago at the same annual conference, after Johanns spoke, I rushed to the microphone to ask him the following question:

"Would you support finger-printing farmers, ranchers, and rural businesspeople in order for them to obtain USDA benefits? Assuming that your answer is 'no,' would you support ending the practice in which people are finger-printed in order to get food stamps, especially considering that the other benefits can be hundreds of thousands of dollars and food stamps equal only about one dollar per meal?"

Johanns was obviously at a loss for a response, and it seemed as though he didn't even know that people were finger-printed to get food stamps, even though the Food Stamp program constitutes more than a third of his entire budget, and even though the issue of finger-printing food stamps applicants has been a big political issue and media issue in New York, California, and elsewhere.

He said that, of course, I was correct that he wouldn't support finger-printing farmers, ranchers, and rural businesspeople, and that he would "look into" whether food stamp applicants should be finger-printed. It spoke volumes that the Secretary wasn't even familiar with the issue.

A USDA budget staffer traveling with him was mad at me that that I even made the comparison, saying the programs were entirely different. I responded that his reaction was exactly the point: USDA gets mad at even the notion that you'd treat generally higher-income program users (the vast majority of whom rural and white) as badly as you'd treat low-income food stamps applicants (many of whom are urban and non-white).

I must say I still have a bit of a glow about me having had the rare opportunity to challenge a high-ranking Bush official in a public forum.

Other conference participants also let Johanns have it. They slammed the Administration's proposal to entirely eliminate the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which gives extra food to hundreds of thousands of low-income senior citizens. They opposed the President's plans to slash food stamps and make it more difficult for food banks to distribute commodities. But this year, the official USDA transcript of Johann's remarks entirely omitted the question and answer session.

I don't know which is worse: Mis-transcribing the criticisms last year or entirely leaving them off this year.