Cutting Red Tape To Feed Hungry New
Yorkers
By Councilmember Eric Gioia
If you’re a parent
earning under $24,516 a year, you could qualify for up to $499 every
month to buy nutritious food to feed your children. But here in New York
City, even if you qualify, there’s a good chance that bureaucratic red
tape could prevent you from getting this important aid.
Of the nearly two
million New Yorkers, more than a third of them children, who are at risk
of going hungry every day, almost half qualify for federal food stamp
aid but are not getting it. The fact that there are children who are
underfed, malnourished and even hungry in our city is a sad truth. The
reality that there is much more we can easily do but are failing to do
is unconscionable.
Over the past four
years, working with non-profit organizations like the New York City
Coalition Against Hunger, FoodChange, and the Food Bank for New York
City, I’ve found that much of what stands in the way of helping these
needy New Yorkers is little more than bureaucratic red tape. As chair of
the City Council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations, I have
conducted investigations that found food stamp officials demanding
superfluous personal information from applicants, food stamp offices
without applications on hand, and offices keeping hours that many
hard-working New Yorkers just can’t make.
Under the food stamp program,
which is almost entirely financed by the federal government, billions of
dollars pour into neighborhoods, towns and cities across the country
each year, sharing our nation’s great abundance with those in greatest
need, while boosting local economies with federal dollars.
But New York City today is
leaving more than $1 billion in federal food stamp aid on the table –
money that could be spent in supermarkets, grocery stores and bodegas
throughout Queens and across the city. Indeed, despite recent increases
in enrollment, for which the Human Resources Administration (HRA) is to
be commended, New York City’s participation rate in the food stamp
program, at just over 53 percent, continues to lag behind the national
average of 61.5 percent, and falls far short of that in other
jurisdictions.
I have
a simple, common-sense plan to cut through the red tape and
alleviate hunger in our city, using proven and effective methods. The
City Council has just passed parts of my plan into law.
One law I wrote will
soon allow food stamp applications to be submitted online. The idea is
simple: when applications are y in upstate New York has been doing this
for three years, with great success. In its first year alone, the number
of people receiving food stamps increased more than 25 percent thanks to
the online applications. That kind of increase in our city would mean
almost 300,000 more New Yorkers would get food stamps and almost $30
million in federal aid would be injected into the city’s economy.
In West Virginia, where food
stamp applications can also be submitted online, the enrollment rate is
an incredible 80.5 percent. There’s no reason we can’t do as well or
better here in New York.
The second part of my plan is to
make food stamp applications available at places where hungry people are
likely to go: this City’s food pantries and soup kitchens. The more than
500 food pantries and soup kitchens funded by the City’s Emergency Food
Assistance Program served 12.1 million people in the last fiscal year.
By putting food stamp applications at every one of these sites, this
common-sense law will help us reach more of these hungry people.
Taken together, these
laws will make the food stamp application process more convenient for
all applicants. They will help alleviate hunger in our city, and inject
millions of dollars in federal aid into our local economy, giving our
neighborhoods and the entire city an economic boost.
The current system, which often
forces people to wait in line for hours during the workday just to
submit a food stamp application, discourages hard-working New Yorkers
from applying. By removing these needless obstacles and improving
access to food stamps for those who are entitled to them by law,
however, my plan will strengthen families, feed hungry New Yorkers, and
reward hard work.
Non-profit organizations have
made a major difference on this very important issue, and the knowledge,
dedication and commitment of their staff and leadership have been
essential to our success in passing my plan into law. With their
continued help and hard work, we will put food on the tables of
thousands of hungry New York families, and truly give every family the
opportunity to achieve their dreams.
Gioia represents Long Island
City, Woodside, Sunnyside, Maspeth and Astoria in the New York City
Council.
