Hunger
Grassroots Grocery has a charismatic founder, a compelling origin story and a six-figure reserve fund that mutual-aid workers and organizers in the borough say are the fruits of “poverty pimping.”
The borough’s community refrigerators — fewer than during the pandemic — are strapped for cash as well as volunteers to transport food.
The demand for food resources continues to grow for many New Yorkers, but closures of community run pantries have resulted in difficulty accessing food banks.
City social service agency imposes limits on orders of fruits and vegetables under federally funded P-FRED initiative. “We didn’t hear anything,” says one volunteer.
The popular pandemic-inspired program for senior citizens and homebound New Yorkers who can’t afford delivery will shut down when fed funding ends in October, THE CITY has learned.
The Cuomo move followed pressure from nonprofit pantries and meal deliverers that help keep legions of food-insecure New Yorkers fed amid the pandemic. But mutual aid members apparently don’t count.
Masbia, which operates around the clock, five days a week with two pantries in Brooklyn and one in Queens, is expanding its capacity ahead of what is traditionally the busiest time of the year.
A survey commissioned by the de Blasio administration and obtained by THE CITY uncovered a profound need for more food — including a preference for produce they could cook at home.
A pandemic-spurred movement has seeded 70 community refrigerators and counting on sidewalks throughout the city — but still not nearly enough to meet neverending demand. Now some established food pantries are aiding the effort.
A New Jersey warehouse, set up as a supply reserve during the height of the coronavirus crisis, is distributing items to food pantries in the city. The first deliveries go out Monday.
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