Food is a right
Remarks to the People’s State of the State 2024
Alliance for a Hunger-Free New York
Schenectady Community Ministries serves Schenectady County (NY) residents with a commitment to procure F high-quality, culturally affirming, reliable, and accessible food for anyone who expresses a need for food. There should be no doubt about it – food should be considered a human right. Survey after survey shows that the top three concerns of individuals and families who live in conditions of poverty are access to reliable and safe housing, high-quality healthcare – mental and physical, and food. Over 60% of the people we serve in Schenectady County are children, youth, and senior citizens.
In her State of the State address, Governor Hochul proposed ideas for housing and mental health care. There was no mention of food in her address. We stand here to remind Governor Hochul, and members of the State Assembly and Senate, that without a robust food relief strategy that brings the State’s Health, Agriculture, and Budget leaders together with community-based food relief organizations, the mistakes of the 2023 five-year HPNAP contracting process will remain.
Many food relief organizations for years (some even decades) have faithfully served their communities with essential support from the state through the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) and most recently through Nourish New York. The 2023 five-year contracting process with the NYS Department of Health left many local organizations with reduced financial support. Some didn’t even get a contract. Not only did Schenectady Community Ministries lose 30% of its combined HPNAP and Nourish New York allocation compared to 2022, but the five-year contract we got was only from Nourish New York. That profoundly hampers the community of Schenectady from acquiring less costly food products from the USDA.
Even when we were able to get a significant one-year contract through our Regional Food Bank, the operational cost support food relief organizations like ours received from a five-year direct contract with HPNAP is gone. Volunteers who serve food relief organizations, simply put, are essential to our ability to provide reliable access to food to our communities. However, the ability to hire folks who are from and committed to the communities we serve to provide professional and supportive services, and to cover basic energy, transportation, and operational costs ought to be an essential consideration in the State budget and the contracting process. Community-based organizations should have all the resources needed because we, at the community level, have the relational capacity to respond more readily to the hopes, aspirations, and expectations of our communities.
For Schenectady Community Ministries, 2023 saw a 40% increase in visits to our pantry, and a 30% increase in our food output. This is in a county with over 70% of SNAP and WIC-eligible individuals and households receiving those benefits. These increases do not count our commitment to partner with smaller food pantries in Schenectady, and with regional coalitions like the Food Pantries of the Capital District and our Regional Food Bank, to make our warehousing and procurement capacity a hub for food relief organizations throughout the county.
This increase for Schenectady Community Ministries carries a significant operational cost. Our pantry programs serve all of Schenectady out of our pantry and warehouse building on Hamilton Hill – one of the most impoverished and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the Capital Region, through 10 mobile pantries in partnership with the city school district, community health partners, and the YWCA of NorthEastern NY, and over 100 pantry deliveries a week. Schenectady Community Ministries, our other food relief partners in the county, and each one of the organizations represented here are doing the work. Our call to the Governor, assemblymembers, and senators is to review the state budget and the contracting process to prioritize allocations and support to community-based food relief organizations and give us back the ability to sustain and expand these services and networks with the ability to be nimble and responsive. Community resilience, dignity, and sustainability are in the balance of community-based and responsive food access.
How can this happen?
Let’s make sure all state agencies concerned are directly contracting with all types of organizations providing food relief programs, and providing them with, BOTH, Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program and Nourish New York funding in those contracts.
Partner with food relief organizations and their vendors, including food banks, for a straightforward reporting mechanism that supports the commitment to food access of the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program, and of support to New York State farmers and food producers of Nourish New York.
Fund HPNAP at $75 Million
Fund Nourish NY at $75 Million
We can do this. Community-level serving organizations have been and will continue to be ready to encourage the health, nourishment, and resilience of everyone in our communities.