Working, Middle Class Long Islanders Turning to Food Pantries

By Ellen Yan
Newsday
March 31, 2008

These days, food pantries aren't just for the jobless or homeless.

Tapping such free resources has turned into a survival tactic for some working members of the middle class as they struggle with an economy that has put them in a bind.

A father of three, Bill makes more than $70,000 a year. But after his mortgage rate reset in October, hiking his payments from $3,300 to $4,300, he began going to his church's food pantry.

"I sat here at home and argued with my wife about who's going," said Bill, a Nassau County employee who asked not to be identified further. "I tried to go to work that day. ... It's very embarrassing.

"Here I'm making a decent salary. I'm a professional, but I can't even feed my kids."

More and more working Long Islanders are straining to put groceries on the table as many essentials -- milk and bread, fuel oil, gasoline and health care premiums -- have climbed faster than the Consumer Price Index. In some cases, they're people daunted by the steep rise in property taxes or payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages.

These new hard times have turned some past donors into today's receivers of charity. The number of people seeking help is up even as donations are down. Food collected from restaurants and supermarkets by the Mineola-based Island Harvest dropped from 7 million pounds in 2006 to 6.5 million last year, and the agency has started pressing more farmers to help fill the hole.

While no agency keeps statistics for food pantries across Long Island, some operators find they're facing double the number of clients from a year ago.

"We're seeing folks that may own a home, who may be working two or three jobs, but are not able to cover all the costs that they've incurred," said Gwen O'Shea, president of the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island, a social services advocacy group.

The Long Island Council of Churches, which shut down its Riverhead pantry one day in January because it was empty, finds people arriving in more desperate straits. "The big growth is not in the suddenly unemployed," said its executive director, the Rev. Thomas Goodhue. "The big growth is in the employed who can't make ends meet and the retirees who can't make ends meet."

Their last resort

Nonprofit officials and directors of church social ministries interviewed said they know of people who cry before walking into pantries. Or they drive round and round the block, building up the nerve to go in. Few of the working people who've come to rely on the pantries wanted their last names revealed.

Anne, 37, a single mother of two who said she is a salaried "middle-income" legal assistant, said she began seeking help from St. Frances de Chantal Roman Catholic Church in Wantagh less than two years ago, when her 3.5 percent pay increase was outpaced by gas hikes and rent on her two-bedroom apartment. Her ex-husband had stopped paying child support.

One day, she said, she didn't have a dime toward diapers for her daughter. That's when her resolve not to ask for charity broke.

"It was horrible," she recalled. "I felt like my world had crashed, but I had to do what I could to support the children. There were weeks when I didn't have any money."

Lately, Anne's been part of Single Moms on Long Island, a support group that also arranges activities for children. And she's found a Web site listing places where kids eat free -- which is how she arranged for her son to celebrate his birthday earlier this month, at Friendly's.

Priced out for help

Nonprofit officials said the long-term solution is moving people off emergency food and onto government programs, such as the food stamp program and HEAP, the government Home Energy Assistance Program that helps pay for oil.

But many of the middle class make too much to qualify for such programs.

"They come in here for immediate emergency resources, but the reality is where are they going to be in another six months?" Health and Welfare Council's O'Shea said. "The picture is not good."

Officials at Bay Shore-based Pronto, a social services agency, have noticed an increase in clients with college degrees, white-collar jobs or higher salaries -- economic refugees of foreclosures, gas prices and oil bills.

One of them is Edward Mott of Bay Shore, a Long Island Power Authority grounds foreman who is on disability after a 5,000-pound cherry tree fell on him. His wife works two jobs and her earnings, with his disability benefits, don't cover the $2,600 monthly mortgage and cost of groceries.

"We bring in over $40,000, and we still can't afford to give our daughter what she needs for school," said Mott, 50. "To survive on Long Island these days, you have to make at least $1,000 a week. Otherwise, you have no business being here anymore."

Struggling to make it

Taking charity can feel lousy, some food pantry customers said. "It's not the best feeling in the world, especially for someone who's working," said Laura, 37, who every once in a while takes a jar of peanut butter or jelly from the food pantry at the Hampton Bays nonprofit where she works as a secretary.

By comparison, she said, her parents never asked for free food, no matter how desperate they were when business at their gas station went dead in winter. "My parents would have a can of soup, and we would split that to eat," she said.

Laura's plight worsened six months ago, when she and her husband separated and she was left with their four children, including a daughter who has severe scoliosis and is on a 24-hour feeding tube. Laura wants to refinance her 6-year-old mortgage, but the subprime collapse and falling property values have made it hard to get a new loan.

Now she's trying to meet a $1,863 monthly payment with her salary, child support and the benefits for her disabled daughter. "It's really sad," she said. "You're working on Long Island and it's hard to make it out here. ...

"I'm looking for a philanthropist to come in and save me," she said, laughing.

Anne, the single mom, cringes when she thinks of going to the church for help -- but that very help has kept her world from collapsing.

"It's allowed me to put gas in my car. It's allowed me to pay my electric bill," she said. "I'm happy that they're there to help, but I have so much pride that I feel disgraced. I feel like I've been reduced to nothing."

Kenny Porpora contributed to this story.

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