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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Kim Moscaritolo, State Policy Director of Hunger Free America, on Food Insecurity and Benefit Programs
3:56:59
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136 sec
Kim Moscaritolo, State Policy Director of Hunger Free America, testified about the hunger crisis in New York City and proposed solutions to combat it. She emphasized the importance of city funding for food assistance programs in light of potential federal budget cuts to SNAP and other food assistance programs.
- Highlighted the need to increase funding for nonprofit groups that help people access government food benefits
- Advocated for the creation of a MyCity portal to streamline benefit applications
- Suggested improvements to school breakfast programs and outreach for the new summer EBT program
- Stressed the importance of connecting people with federal benefits they are eligible for as a cost-effective way to combat hunger
Kim Moscaritolo
3:56:59
Thank you so much for having this hearing, Chair Ayala and Chair Brannan, well as Councilmember Brewer, and all the members of the committees.
3:57:06
My name is Kim Mascaratolo.
3:57:08
I'm the state policy director for Hunger Free America.
3:57:11
I've testified in front of the general welfare committee several times in the past few months talking about the massive hunger crisis in New York City.
3:57:19
I wanna thank all of my fellow advocates who were here advocating for the baseline funding for CFC, which of course we agree with.
3:57:26
And they've given you all the statistics on hunger in New York City, so I don't need to repeat all of that.
3:57:32
I will say that this week, the House Agriculture Committee passed a portion of the broader budget package that would slash US domestic food assistance by $300,000,000,000.
3:57:42
The cuts to SNAP alone would reduce benefits for all 41,000,000 participants in the program, and so I think it's more important than ever that the city council really needs to step up in terms of funding programs that will help people who are hungry and help people who are facing poverty.
3:58:01
Nearly one out of every five children in New York City experiences food in insecurity.
3:58:05
And at the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of city residents eligible for federally funded benefits who do not receive them.
3:58:12
And so in terms of what we believe the city can do to most effectively fight this, first and foremost, increasing funding to nonprofit groups that increase access to government food benefits through the NYC benefits program and direct city council funding, accelerate the city's promised work to create a MyCity portal that would allow people to apply for benefits, multiple benefits at the same time.
3:58:34
We want to make sure that all classes in New York City public schools provide either in classroom school breakfast or grab and go breakfast.
3:58:41
We want to make sure that you work with nonprofit groups to launch a comprehensive outreach and enrollment campaign to ensure robust participation in the new summer EBT program.
3:58:51
We hope that you will take all or some of these actions rapidly.
3:58:54
We still believe that the best way to combat hunger is to connect people with the federal benefits they are eligible for.
3:59:01
We also think this will help as we are facing budget cuts everywhere.
3:59:06
Making sure that people are connected to those federal benefits, that's hopefully less funding that the city council will have to provide directly to them.
3:59:12
So we thank you for your time and we hope you'll commit to some of these programs.