As need grows, funding for LI food pantries shrinks

Even as Suffolk struggles with swelling welfare rolls and a growing homeless population, about $1 million in federal funds for Suffolk soup kitchens, homeless shelters and other anti-poverty charities has vanished.

Along with other services, the Emergency Food and Shelter Program last year gave Suffolk money for 120,000 soup kitchen meals, bought $530,000 in groceries for food pantries and provided $583,000 to help hundreds of families pay their rent and make house payments.

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Charities expected checks to arrive next month. Now they are scrambling to fill the gap at a time when private donations also have been declining as the recession continues.

"We are sinking fast," said Ann Moran-Smith, executive director of The Ministries, a Coram nonprofit that received 90 percent of its food budget, $80,000, from the program.

About $450,000 of the $1.4 million granted last year may already have been lost anyway because it was part of last year's federal stimulus bill. The rest was a victim of the federal rules that determine county eligibility based on unemployment rates.

Suffolk didn't qualify this year because its average unemployment rate of 7.4 percent last year fell below a new government benchmark by 0.4 percentage points, officials said.

Nassau had a lower unemployment rate of 6.9 percent but got $695,000 because it has an incorporated village, Hempstead, with an average jobless rate above 9.8 percent. Suffolk has areas with higher rates - Wyandanch and Brentwood, among others - but they are unincorporated and don't count as separate entities from the county, officials said.

An 'atrocity'

"It's an unjust formula they cling to despite the atrocity that results from it," said Gregory Blass, commissioner of Suffolk's Department of Social Services.

Said Peggy Boyd of the Family Service League, which runs social services programs across Long Island: "The formula is just so out of whack with the need that's here in Suffolk."

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the fund, referred questions to the United Way Worldwide, which distributes the money for the federal government.

"I can't speak to how the formula was set," said Del Galloway, a spokesman for United Way Worldwide.

To put the loss in perspective, last year's Food and Shelter Program funding to soup kitchens and food pantries alone - $680,000 - was 50 percent more than what Suffolk County provided those programs.

"That is a shocking, shocking drop in food and shelter resources here in Suffolk," Blass said. "And it could not come at a worse time."

Welfare rolls grow

In the past year, Suffolk's welfare rolls have grown to more than 16,000 people, more than 24 percent. That's a bigger increase than in Nassau (up 16 percent) and statewide (up 7 percent), according to state data. Suffolk's homeless population has ballooned to nearly 1,400 this month, up 28 percent over the same time last year.

Meanwhile, the 20 charities affected say more people than ever are asking them for help.

About 40 percent more meals were served in 2009 than in 2008 at 15 Interfaith Nutrition Network soup kitchens in Suffolk, which received its entire food purchasing budget last year, $120,000, from the food and shelter program.

"We're very, very anxious," said executive director Jean Kelly. "All of our soup kitchens are at risk right now of closing."

Catholic Charities and the Society of St. Vincent De Paul, which separately run programs that helped 167 families pay back rent or mortgage arrears with federal money, may scale back their efforts. A similar Long Island Council of Churches program could simply die.

"This is a devastating loss," said the Rev. Thomas Goodhue, the council's executive director.

It's not the first time Suffolk has lost funding from the food and shelter program, set up in 1983 by Congress to help private efforts at social work. From 2003 to 2005, Suffolk got no such funds. It relied on a few hundred thousand dollars from a state committee that distributes money set aside by Congress for counties that didn't qualify for direct grants.

The state panel should make its funding decisions by early spring, said chairwoman Shelly Nortz.