Hannah Lupien
2:26:32
Good afternoon Chair Ressler, Chair Brennan, and Council Member Schulman, and all the other council members who were here earlier.
2:26:40
Thank you so much for holding this hearing today.
2:26:42
My name is Hannah Lupien and I'm the managing director of food programs at the Met Council on Jewish Poverty.
2:26:48
Met Council operates the largest kosher and halal food pantry network in the country and provides a wide array of support to over 320,000 New Yorkers annually.
2:27:00
In the face of recent funding cuts at the federal level and with more on the horizon, we and our partners at Catholic Charities who you heard from earlier today, as well as Hispanic Federation urgently request that city council allocate $20,000,000 in emergency funding for food pantries, similar to what was allocated at the onset of the COVID pandemic.
2:27:22
This funding will allow us to deploy needed resources to areas with limited pantry and social service infrastructure, as well as to communities with religiously informed or culturally nuanced diets that are not part of the traditional emergency food system, and to programs that facilitate increased access to emergency food.
2:27:41
Additionally, we want to express our support for the council's decision to call on the administration to baseline fund Community Food Connections, CFC, at $100,000,000 a year.
2:27:53
New Yorkers observing religiously informed diets will go without food if the emergency food system does not provide appropriate products.
2:28:01
Met Council works hard to meet the food needs of all New Yorkers by providing both kosher and halal observant food assistance to anyone who comes to our pantries.
2:28:11
Met Council's ability to provide kosher and halal food to hungry New Yorkers is directly tied to funding from the federal government.
2:28:18
And I'd like to speak to two programs that have not yet been mentioned today.
2:28:22
The local food purchase assistance program and the emergency food assistance program provide incredibly important support both in cash that we can use to purchase kosher and halal foods not otherwise available through public streams.
2:28:37
And the second, the emergency food assistance program, in kind food administered by OGS at the state level to provide basics like rice, dried beans, and limited fresh produce to New Yorkers of all stripes.
2:28:52
And finally, the emergency food and shelter program through FEMA, all three of these programs enable Met Council to distribute millions of pounds of food every year.
2:29:02
They have, all three of the programs have already faced cuts or freezes, in funding just in the recent weeks.
2:29:09
These cuts directly impact our ability to serve New Yorkers the foods that meet their needs.
2:29:14
It is now more vital than ever that city council steps in to help fill the gap left by these federal cuts and to support the programs that serve hungry New Yorkers.
2:29:22
The decisions made by this committee will impact the lives of millions of our neighbors.
2:29:27
By allocating the $20,000,000 of funding for emergency food pantries and funding CFC at a baseline of a hundred million dollars, this committee will support emergency food providers during a time of immense uncertainty and benefit all food insecure New Yorkers, including those with religiously informed dietary restrictions.
2:29:46
We thank you for your time today and we hope to continue to work with this committee and city council to fight food insecurity.
