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Last week Congress conference agreement on 2008 Farm Bill makes numerous improvements in domestic food assistance programs to help low-income Americans put food on the table in the face of rising food and fuel prices. The changes could provide an additional $9 million in the next fiscal year and could assist an additional 211,000 people by 2012.

The following is from an analysis by Dorothy Rosenbaum for the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. To read her full report click here. To read our prior posts on hunger click here.

The nutrition title of the conference agreement includes more than $10 billion over ten years in increases in these programs - including $7.8 billion for the Food Stamp Program, $1.26 billion for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and $1 billion for the free fresh fruits and vegetable snack program, which is targeted to schools with high shares of low- income families.

The nutrition title of the farm bill would:

End years of erosion in the purchasing power of food stamps by raising and indexing for inflation the program’s standard deduction and minimum benefit.

These changes would help about 11 million low income people, including families with children, seniors, and people with disabilities. With these changes, Food Stamp Program rules would fully account for annual inflation for the first time since the program’s creation over 40 years ago, and food stamp households would stop losing food purchasing power each year.

Support working-poor families by eliminating the cap on the dependent care deduction, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Advocacy, center for budget and policy priorities, farm bill, food stamp program, Hunger

We have posted several important articles about hunger on the Moanrch Housing Blog! over the last year. This Monday we published Perfect storm leaves cupboards bare at NJ food pantries! Obviously hunger is an important issue, which with rising food prices is being exacerbated.

Bill Moyer’s April 11th Journal - Hunger in America - on PBS gives great insight on how rising food prices and the deteriorating state of the economy has caused the number of people going to food pantries to increase substantially. At the same time, the number of donations to the pantry and the quality of food has decreased. The video features guests of one pantry. To the surprise of many, these includes more than the elderly and low-income - but also people who have earned high school degrees, full time jobs and many families. You can watch the video on our site. To read a transcript click here.

 

 Bill Moyers Journal: Hunger in America [13:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Star-Ledger printed a front page article today entitled “Food pantries’ cupboards are closer to bare.” It highlights the perfect storm that is impacting the ability of emergency food providers in New Jersey. It is as the Star-Ledger stated “a two-way crunch — rising prices are making it tougher to keep the shelves stocked at the same time more people are coming in the door for help.”

The article highlights our fiends at Elijah’s Promise and CUMAC/ECHO. To read the full article click here.

The article notes these dramatic increase “CUMAC/ECHO, a Paterson food pantry run by the Rev. Pat Bruger, the client base has grown close to 30 percent since January, raising the monthly average of people served from 2,000 to 2,600. The number of senior citizens has grown by more than 30 percent, the number of children by 11 percent.” They quote Rev. Pat Bruger of CUMAC/ECHO “Pantries were serving people who were in emergency need, and they were mostly on welfare. Now they’re … working families and people on fixed incomes. We did not foresee this. Not at this level.”

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, President of the United States Conference of Mayors which has partnered with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness to commit to the abolition of the disgrace of homelessness, became a Charter Signatory to the America’s Road Home Principles. Mayor Palmer signed the Statement at the Conference of Mayors headquarters during the press conference of the Mayors Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.

We salute Mayor Palmer for his leadership on this issue not only nationally but in the City of Trenton. We encourage other mayors, county executives and elected leaders in New Jersey to also sign on to America’s Road Home Principles so that we wild have leadership and commitment to end chronic homelessness in New Jersey.

For more information on the America’s Road Home Principles click here.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently released the 2007 Hunger and Homelessness Survey which covers 23 major U.S. cities includign Trenton, NJ. This survey collects information on emergency food assistance, emergency shelter and transitional housing, the cities’ capacity to meet demand, and causes cited for hunger and homelessness in each of the surveyed cities. The major findings of the report are that, among the 21 cities that supplied data, persons in families with children constitute 23 percent of persons using emergency shelter or transitional housing, down from 30 percent last year. Approximately 76 percent were single individuals and 1 percent were unaccompanied youth.

When citing causes for homelessness, the reasons listed for persons in families differed greatly from those given for individuals. For families, affordable housing, poverty, and domestic violence were the three main reasons given by the 23 cities. The reasons listed for singles were most commonly disabilities such as mental illness or substance abuse.

A majority of the cities (80 percent) surveyed in the study reported that requests for emergency food assistance increased during the last year and 82 percent expect the need for food assistance to increase in 2008. Cities reported that the top three causes of hunger were high housing costs, poverty, and unemployment. The most commonly cited way to reduce hunger was “through building more affordable housing.”

As the authors of the report note, the findings in this study should be used carefully as it is considered a survey of a sample of cities and not necessarily nationally representative. Each city used different methods to respond to the questionnaire, including using administrative databases, client-level tracking systems, and extrapolation from other studies.

This article was in today’s Star-Ledger. It is an excellent example of the leadership of creative organizations like Elijah’s Promise and New Jersey farmers. The commitment to sustanability is crucial in our ever more precarious environment.

Farmers market joins soup kitchen
Case of sustainability, community building

Friday, June 15, 2007, BY NAWAL QAROONI, Star-Ledger Staff

The Highland Park farmers market has brought fresh fruits, vegetables and gourmet natural products to the surrounding community for more than a decade.

Now, organizers are taking a stab at another social mission: sustainability.

Partnering with Elijah’s Promise, a New Brunswick-based nonprofit soup kitchen, the market will serve wholesome vegetarian sandwiches prepared by the shelter’s catering employees, said Rita Finstein, who has been manager for eight years.

Read the rest of this entry »

One more driveway moment on NPR.

Feeding the Homeless in Sin City
by Rachel Jones

Day to Day, April 23, 2007 · In Las Vegas, the homeless population is growing faster than the city government can feed them. But some private groups, stepping in with portable soup kitchens and feeding stations in public areas, have encountered resistance.

To listen click here and then on listen.

We heard this on NPR’s Day to Day on Janaury3, 2007, in a driveway moment.

Texas Group Drives Meals to the Homeless
by Wade Goodwyn

Day to Day, January 3, 2007 · In Austin, Texas, a commercial real-estate entrepreneur is employing catering trucks to feed the homeless. His organization, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, uses customized trucks and volunteer drivers to deliver meals to those living in the streets. To listen to this story click here.

Dec. 23, 2006
Feeding the Homeless on L.A.’s Skid Row

Dec. 12, 2006
People’s Park Faces Uncertain Future in Berkeley