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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.

Today is Thanksgiving.

Reports in recent weeks have highlighted the shortages in food pantries and increased demands for shelters. In today’s paper was a report entitled “Donation downturn: Charity groups fear housing woes will hurt hungry, homeless” The report underscores the decline in giving by the wealthy and the dramatic impact of the housing slump on the poor and the homeless.

We found some hope for the holidays by reading an article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek entitled “Blessed Is the Full Plate: A terrible shortage of food for the poor grips the country. Where is the political will to do the right thing for the hungry?” Her column focuses on the soup kitchen at Holy Apostles in New York City. It underscores the importance of the political will to end homelessness and hunger in America.

Her last two paragraph call for a new prayer for politicians.

This place is a blessing, and an outrage. “We call these people our guests,” says the rector. “They are the children of God.” That’s real God talk. The political arena has been lousy with the talk-show variety in recent years: worrying about whether children could pray in school instead of whether they’d eaten before they got there, obsessing about the beginning of life instead of the end of poverty, concerned with private behavior instead of public generosity.

There’s a miracle in which an enormous crowd comes to hear Jesus and he feeds them all by turning a bit of bread and fish into enough to serve the multitudes. The truth is that America is so rich that political leaders could actually produce some variant of that miracle if they had the will. And, I suppose, if they thought there were votes in it. Enough with the pious sanctimony about gay marriage and abortion. If elected officials want to bring God talk into public life, let it be the bedrock stuff, about charity and mercy and the least of our brethren. Instead of the performance art of the presidential debate, the candidates should come to Holy Apostles and do what good people, people of faith, do there every day - feed the hungry, comfort the weary, soothe the afflicted. And wipe down the tables after each seating. Here’s a prayer for every politician: pasta, collard greens, bread, cling peaches. Amen.

Best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving!

A recent study by the National Priorities Project idneitifed New Jersey as being 45th in the percentage of low-income people receiving food stamp in 2004. According to the study the percentage receiving benefits was 38.9%. The national average was 50.2%.

In addition five New Jersey counties - Hunterdon, Bergen, Sussex, Somerset and Middlesex - were listed in the top 25 counties with the lowest percentage served by the Food Stamp program.

To read the press release click here.

To view the entire study click here.