Anti-Hunger Advocates Seek City $$

As the Trump administration slashes federal food bank funding, local food access advocates are calling for New Haven to step in with nearly $1 million in city support.

Members of the Greater New Haven Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN) made that request before the Board of Alders Finance Committee during a public hearing Wednesday evening on the mayor’s proposed $703.7 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

The CFAN members ranged from advocates who have personally experienced hunger to leaders of nonprofits that provide food assistance to New Haveners. 

They came together to ask the city to allocate $993,000 toward a variety of local food aid proposals, including funding to help keep food pantries stocked and meals for children during school breaks.

“For some children, the only meals they receive are during school. Unfortunately, food insecurity does not stop while children are on break,” said Susan Harris, a member of both CFAN and Witnesses to Hunger, a group of advocates who draw from personal experience.

CFAN co-chair and Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) Director Steve Werlin highlighted three top priorities among the proposals:

• $285,000 to provide families receiving free or reduced lunch with nutritious groceries during school breaks.

• $240,000 to directly fund food procurement at local pantries. (For reference, DESK alone received the equivalent of $318,000 in direct food supplies last year, as a relatively large organization among New Haven’s approximately 80 soup kitchens and food pantries.)

• And $60,000 to fund an outreach worker focused specifically on enrolling eligible New Haveners in SNAP.

The full set of proposals also includes:

• $138,000 to provide 40 pantries with 50 bus passes each per month for clients in need of transportation, as well as a full-time employee to distribute the bus passes and organize additional transit options for food-insecure clients;

• $125,000 to fund a refrigerated truck for food transportation as well as a staff driver;

• $100,000 to fund a centralized refrigerated storage system for food pantries and soup kitchens that need additional space;

• $50,000 to directly fund food pantry equipment;

• and $75,000 to fund a full-time community health worker who would conduct outreach at food pantries and connect clients to additional resources.

This advocacy has been in the works since August, said CFAN co-chair Alycia Santilli. It has taken on even more urgency in light of federal cuts to food assistance. 

The Trump administration has eliminated $500 million in funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a bedrock of food banks across the country. As of March 25, the state’s primary food bank, CT Foodshare, has lost 34 truckloads of food due to those TEFAP cuts. 

The food bank has also lost an $800,000 Local Food Purchase Assistance grant recently canceled under President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, amid tarriff-induced turblence in the economy and a spike in American job losses, Congress is weighing the possibility of slashing SNAP funding. As of 2021, according to DataHaven, 27 percent of New Haveners paid for their groceries with SNAP assistance.

Even prior to these changes, about a fifth of New Haveners did not have reliable access to enough food, according to CT Foodshare. 

The food bank cuts are poised to make that number grow, as CT Foodshare provides over two thirds of the food distributed via New Haven’s food pantries, according to Werlin.

Werlin said that DESK has already seen a reduction in the food it receives from CT Foodshare. ​“There’s been a downward trend of available food, especially in things like fresh vegetables and frozen meats and dairy: more expensive and perishable items,” Werlin said. 

Santilli, who directs the local public health advocacy group CARE, noted that the cuts have particularly affected the most nutritious food options. 

“Sometimes there’s this myth that people in general don’t want access to healthy food,” Santilli said. ​“They want fresh fruits and vegetables, they want lean meats, they want dairy.” Those types of food can have a profound positive impact on health, she said, but they tend to be less affordable than processed foods.

CFAN is advocating for the state legislature to pass H.B. 7021, which would allocate an additional $10 million toward CT Foodshare.

The advocates who testified at City Hall on Wednesday argued that the city has a critical role to play in food funding as well. According to Werlin, the city has not supported food aid through its general fund budget for at least the last decade.

“This comes down to what we think the point of government is,” Werlin said. ​“Is the role of government to be providing for basic needs or isn’t it?” 

“We feel that the city has an obligation to ensure that all people have access to good food,” which is a ​“basic human right,” Santilli said. 

She argued that New Haven’s food pantry and soup kitchen system is too dependent on charitable donations.

“Our food programs are continuously performing miracles to get food to hungry families,” she added in testimony to the alders, ​“but they do not have enough food to get out.”

A reliance on private donors adds another layer of concern for some organizations about the possibility of continued economic turmoil, according to Mary Guerrera, the director of Fellowship Place.

At the organization for adults with chronic mental illness, ​“food insecurity is a major, major issue for the people we serve,” many of whom are unhoused or on a fixed income, Guerrera said.

Fellowship Place provides three meals a day, five days a week, for about 365 to 400 people per year. While a portion of the food comes from CT Foodshare, most of it comes from private fundraising, Guerrera said.

“We’re very, very concerned with the volatility of the economy right now,” she said, noting that foundations and other donors have less funding to distribute when the stock market is down.

In a phone interview, Finance Committee Chair Adam Marchand said in response to the food funding proposal, ​“I can’t say just yet where this will end up, because there’s a lot of requests from nonprofits, from the Board of Ed, from other parts of the city for more funding.”

“It’s challenging, and we’re also dealing with possible impacts from what’s happening in Washington,” Marchand said. ​“But I’m listening to it and I’m all ears, because I know many of these community organizations and what kind of work they do… We’re gonna need to collectively figure out a solution. How much of it will come from the city budget remains to be seen.”