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Q&A
Community Food Connections program funding and distribution challenges
2:28:53
ยท
5 min
Council Member Ayala inquires about Community Food Connections (CFC) program funding and distribution, particularly addressing needs in The Bronx. DSS officials provide information on current funding, distribution, and plans to address challenges.
- CFC budget for FY '25 is $60 million, dropping to $20.9 million in FY '26 and out years
- DSS coordinating with OMB on future funding
- Distribution of food pantries varies by borough, with fewer in The Bronx despite high food insecurity
- DSS working on capacity building and alternative distribution methods for underserved areas
- Consideration of using schools, churches, and senior centers as potential distribution points in The Bronx
Diana Ayala
2:28:53
Okay.
2:28:54
We just had this song and dance with Jack the other day.
2:28:58
Okay.
2:29:00
CFC funding.
2:29:01
Community Food Connections is a vital resource providing much needed food to the city's vast network of food pantries and soup kitchens.
2:29:08
This program is especially important given the current number of asylum seekers in the city who are not eligible for many public benefits programs.
2:29:16
In the fiscal year twenty five preliminary budget response, the council called on the administration to increase the end baseline the budget to 60,000,000 to help combat the high levels of food insecurity in the city, which persists today.
2:29:28
As of the preliminary plan, the fiscal twenty twenty five budget for CFC totaled 60,000,000.
2:29:35
However, the funding dropped substantially to 20,900,000.0 in fiscal year twenty six and in the out years.
2:29:41
This is a critical program for families in need.
2:29:44
Will funding be added for this program and if so when and how much?
Molly Wasow Park
2:29:47
Yeah.
2:29:48
Understood on the on the need.
2:29:50
We agree with you on the critical critical nature of the program and we are coordinating with OMB on that one.
Diana Ayala
2:29:55
Okay.
2:29:57
Do we know what the actual spending thus far in '25 is and how much was spent in fiscal year twenty four?
Molly Wasow Park
2:30:03
We spend the full allocation.
2:30:05
It's dispersed out to the not for profits so that they can purchase food.
2:30:13
I'm not sure if we have the spending to date but it tracks fairly proportionally to where we are in the fiscal year.
Jill Berry
2:30:22
I don't have the spending to date offhand, but we make sure to reallocate all of the funding every single year to make sure we spend every dollar.
Diana Ayala
2:30:28
All right.
2:30:29
Can you get those numbers to us?
2:30:30
That would be great.
2:30:31
Thank you.
2:30:32
A report from IBO published in November of twenty four found that The Bronx has the highest food insecurity rate, yet it has the second lowest number of active site hours.
2:30:42
What is HRA doing to specifically address the food access need in The Bronx, and what is the distribution of CFC providers amongst the five boroughs?
Molly Wasow Park
2:30:53
So the for food pantries by borough, there are two twenty three in Brooklyn, One Hundred And Twenty Two in The Bronx, 90 7 in Manhattan, One Hundred And Fifty Two in Queens, and 26 in Staten Island.
2:31:10
And for community kitchens, it's 26 in Brooklyn, 15 in The Bronx, 30 4 in Manhattan, 10 in Queens, 4 in Staten Island.
2:31:21
I'm gonna ask Jill Barry to talk about the process that we go through to set food allocations.
Jill Berry
2:31:29
So first of all I do want to recognize that we do note and notice that there are fewer pantries in The Bronx probably than there is need in The Bronx.
2:31:40
And we have been talking with our partners at United Way City Harvest and Food Bank about food allocations going forward, how we can better coordinate.
2:31:51
But I think we know that one of the issues in The Bronx and other neighborhoods in the city quite frankly is that there's just not a lot of infrastructure for food pantries, existing food pantries to receive the funding and we do want to think about how we do that better going forward through potentially capacity building grants or other things that can build up pantries.
2:32:16
In the meantime we do things like working with food pantry providers who have mobile pantries who can bring food to locations like The Bronx that may not have as many pantries or infrastructure.
2:32:29
But in terms of setting the allocations every year we start with the pantries that we've been working with.
2:32:35
We do have an open rolling application process throughout the year.
2:32:39
We look at the supply gap analysis and then we take into consider and how much pantries have received in the past, what their capacity for receiving more food is, and we have taken into consideration in past allocations things like at the end of COVID when there was a loss of SNAP benefits, when the SNAP benefits were reduced, we looked at the neighborhoods that were most impacted by that and we took that into consideration.
2:33:07
As we have opened up more of the emergency shelter locations that don't have where there are many people who are not in receipt of benefits to purchase their own food.
2:33:19
We have made additional allocations to pantries in those neighborhoods too and we will continue every year to look at in addition to the regular supply gap analysis and the capacity of pantries, any other external factors that may be playing a role to help us determine where we should be allocating more food.
2:33:41
And we do need to work more on capacity building for places like The Bronx and other neighborhoods that do we do see that there is a high food need and not a lot of pantries.
2:33:55
So I don't have the answer yet.
2:33:56
It is on our radar.
2:33:58
It is something we are talking to.
Diana Ayala
2:33:59
I mean I think one of the creative way to maybe go about it is working with some of the local schools.