In the queue, there is Gustavo, an Uber driver who had to resolve himself, in front of the number of his races which “Much reduced since the start of the pandemic”, to come and get food “sometimes” in St John’s, he admits modestly. His wife, a Manhattan restaurant worker, lost her job “From the month of March”. He sighs : “It’s difficult, because we take care of our parents too.”
“Rent”. Behind him, Eneida, who came from Mexico to settle in New York in the early 2000s, has lost “All his households, all his baby-sittings” at the start of the pandemic. “Several families for whom I worked have left the city”, regrets the mother of six, who began using the food bank in June. There’s also Shaneeka, an African-American homeless woman, who has been to St John’s several times a week and for years now, to get food and collect her mail. She says she did “Not really seen his situation evolve” since the Covid hit the largest American city in March. “On the other hand, we saw a lot of new people arrive in line with us.
St John’s Bread & Life, a Catholic organization established since the early 90s in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a mixed-race neighborhood undergoing gentrification in the heart of Brooklyn, has had to deal with a request for food aid this year. “unprecedented, says Sister Caroline Tweedy, its executive director. From June to September, approximately 1,000 tonnes of food and 1.5 million meals were distributed, more than the entire previous twelve months ”, she insists. On her desk and under the gaze of a photo of Mother Teresa pinned to a corkboard, piles of fundraising files.
Of the 5,000 to 6,000 people to whom the organization provides weekly food assistance, “Two-thirds are newcomers who have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic, Sister Caroline believes. We serve seniors, working poor, recent immigrants … she lists. Even when they have enough to pay their rent, given the prices in New York, they don’t have much left to eat. And the Covid has made all the problems worse. ”
Several services offered by St John’s (help for seniors, single mothers) have been suspended, and all efforts have been united to allow as many meals as possible to be distributed. “This Covid crisis is much worse than that of 2008-2009 [dans les banques et la finance, ndlr], explains Vanessa, a volunteer for fifteen years. Everyone here has lost something: a loved one, their job, their home, belonging to a community… Children and seniors are more isolated than ever. ”
New York, 25,000 dead from Covid, deserted by tourists and fleeing by wealthy families, has been particularly affected by the epidemic and its economic consequences. According to a report by the NGO Hunger Free America on the “Hunger crisis” in New York since the pandemic, published in October, food banks and soup kitchens in the city fed 65% more people this year than in 2019. The first cause, underlines the NGO: the loss of a job or income. The unemployment rate in New York was 13.2% in October (up from 3.6% in October 2019), twice the national level.
«Catastrophe». The city estimates that with the pandemic, 2 million New Yorkers (1 in 4 city residents) are food insecure today. That is the double before the pandemic. At the same time, a third of food banks and soup kitchens, often run by elderly volunteers and therefore at risk of the virus, have closed this year, increasing pressure on those in operation.
The authorities reacted at the end of March: Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a coordinator to fight hunger in New York, the city has served more than 130 million free meals, invested $ 25 million to help food banks and soup kitchens, and created a food reserve to support the existing network. “The city was offensive in its response, confirms Sister Caroline, whose organization is 90% funded by private donations. At the same time, faced with such a catastrophe, there was no real choice… ” With her Brooklyn accent, she also says that she is “Frustrated every day” faced with paperwork, reminders from private donors and grant applications. “We fight for every dollar, and we get it”, she said with pride.
Outside, the patient queue bundled up to fill aging shopping carts with clementines, cereals, fresh bread, peanut butter and canned goods, handed out by energetic, masked employees. The flow is continuous, with always a few dozen people. “As it is at the beginning of the month, people have just received their food stamps, and first go to the supermarkets, specifies Jermont Shim, employee of the association. There are a lot more people here at the end of the month. Today, those who are there are those who are not entitled to social assistance, not necessarily papers… ” The New York City Food Stamp Program (Snap) saw the largest increase in the number of beneficiaries between March and April since 1980.
“With the pandemic, everyone has fallen down a notch”, continues Jermont, who greets most of the «clients», he calls them by name: he has worked in St John’s for twenty years, lives in social housing nearby, and knows the area well, having spent his entire life there. Those who barely managed to make ends meet by doing more jobs are now forced to depend on organizations like ours for food. Those who were already poor and were already hungry are even poorer and have even less to eat. “
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