By Michael Amon
Newsday
February 17, 2008
Long Island last month saw sharp increases in applications for government
assistance and a surge of people seeking food from overwhelmed charity
providers, developments that county officials and economists blame on a lagging
economy.
Suffolk County reported a 39-percent increase in food-stamp applicants and a
26-percent increase in welfare applicants last month, compared with 2007's
monthly averages, according to the Department of Social Services. Emergency
applications for assistance with utilities also shot up 39 percent, even though
January was unusually mild.
In Nassau, there were 36.7 percent more food-stamp applicants and 11.6 percent
more welfare applications, compared with the same time last year, officials
said. The county's known homeless population had a 67.2-percent increase from
January 2007. Nassau's Office of Housing and Homeless Services is on pace to
nearly triple the number of people it served last year, officials said.
Meanwhile, food pantries and soup kitchens say they are serving more people than
ever. At the Mary Brennan INN, a Hempstead soup kitchen, about 450 people have
shown up for lunch daily in the past month, 50 percent more than last year, said
manager Jean Victor.
"It used to be we'd make 20 pounds of pasta and have some left over," Victor
said. "Now we make 60 pounds and there's none left over."
Economists said those trends are street-level evidence that the economy is
slowing on Long Island, which the state Department of Labor said created only
4,400 net jobs last year. By contrast, Long Island's economy added 15,700 jobs
between January 2006 and January 2007, and more than 30,000 a year in the late
1990s.
In 2007, unemployment on Long Island rose by 0.6 percent to 3.8 percent overall.
That's still well below the 5 percent national average but a foreboding sign for
a suburban economy, said Pearl Kamer, the chief economist for the Long Island
Association.
Increased requests for government assistance and longer lines at soup kitchens
"are the first indicators that you may be showing economic difficulties," Kamer
said. Citing the subprime mortgage crisis, 30 percent increases in gasoline and
home heating oil prices, and rising grocery prices, Kamer said: "In past
recessions, it has always been the lowest-income workers who line up at the soup
kitchens and who apply for food stamps. I think this economic slowdown is
hitting the middle class and that's a bit frightening."
At the Island Heart Food Pantry in Middle Island, co-director Dennis Murphy said
he has seen an increase in what he calls "the newly poor."
"We're getting more of the relatively well-dressed man or woman with a newish
car but [who] say they have no prospects of a new job," Murphy said. "They're
embarrassed to be here."
Social services officials said the influx of applications can partly be
explained by more vigorous efforts to spread word of the programs.
And not all signs are for the worse. In Suffolk, Medicaid applications are down
11 percent, and the known homeless population of about 275 families and 175
single men or women has not increased from last year, Hampson said.
However, charities and social workers say they are seeing more working people
like Marie Thomas of Hempstead.
A full-time home health aide visiting a soup kitchen for the first time, Thomas,
59, was in line at the Mary Brennan INN Friday morning waiting for a free meal.
She said her $500-a-week salary is no longer enough to buy enough groceries.
"When you go to the supermarket with $50, what do you come out with? Almost
nothing," Thomas said. "You just have to know how to save. That's why I'm here."
Although requests for government assistance are up, many people are not eligible
because they make too much money.
In Suffolk, even as welfare applications increased in January, the number of
people receiving assistance hit an all-time low of 5,304, said Roland Hampson,
spokesman for the Department of Social Services.
"There is a growing gap between the amount of income a family can make to be
eligible for government benefits and the amount of income necessary to make ends
meet," Hampson said. "We're seeing the biggest potential need coming from the
'gap population' - those not eligible for government programs but having a
difficult time making it on Long Island."
It falls to nonprofits to pick up the slack, Hampson said, and charities said
they are struggling to keep up. Long Island Cares, a food distributor for soup
kitchens and food pantries, gave away 500,000 pounds of food last month, 30
percent more than in January 2007, said executive director Lynn Needelman.
"Our emergency food pantries are having a difficult time meeting the demand,"
she said.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.