Waking Up Hungry: Help Us Battle Food Insecurity
Imagine waking up hungry and uncertain where your first and perhaps only meal of the day will come from. This is the harsh reality for many homeless individuals every single day.
One evening, the City Relief team and I were walking around NY Penn Station distributing socks and toiletries to people with nowhere else to go. I remember meeting a young man named Leroy (name changed for privacy). He was about 19 years old and thin. He was gentle and kind. We instantly became friends and I invited him to a City Relief outreach the following week.
Leroy came to the outreach and I was sitting watching him devour the soup. When he had finished his 4th cup, I asked: "When was the last time you ate?"
"When I was with you in Penn Station." He replied.
"That was 4 days ago!"
"Yep. May I have another?"
As I got up to get him another soup it occurred to me that sometimes I have questioned meeting urgent needs like food, clothing, and hygiene items because of the narrative out there that these "giveaways" only reinforce homelessness by enabling people to stay where they are instead of incentivizing them to go somewhere else. These days it is not uncommon for cities to try to penalize organizations that distribute food to unhoused individuals. I guess the thinking goes that if you stop feeding people, they will be forced to find resources elsewhere and maybe magically "figure out" that the only reason they are in the street to begin with is a lack of effort on their part. The problem with this thinking is that it is almost always reinforced by people who either forget what it’s like to survive day-to-day because it has been so long since they've had to, or they never experienced it at all and assume that homeless people are always just one "decision" away from getting a job, saving money, and starting a family. Yet, how can we expect people to overcome these hurdles without the most basic things they need to survive?
Eating is one of our basic needs and not knowing where your next meal will come from or what it will be can be anxiety inducing at the very least. Then finding those three meals or trying to ask for money to buy them care be incredibly time consuming. Being hungry can lead to difficulty focusing, headaches, and other health issues. It also affects moods—making tempers short and tasks more challenging. And if you have a preexisting health condition like diabetes, it's sometimes a choice between eating something not good for you or not eating at all.
Access to food is something many of us take for granted. Thanks to our partners like Park 100 Foods and Teixeira's Bakery, we served over 47,000 healthy vegan meals in 2022, and we're on pace to surpass that in 2023. Our delicious healthy soup means that for about $10 we can provide meals for about 8 people. Today, I urge you to remember the daily struggles of our homeless neighbors. Together, we can work towards a future where no one has to face the harsh reality of waking up hungry with no options in sight.
Your partnership makes it all happen.
Warm Regards,
Josiah Haken
P.S. Our goal this summer is to have 50 new monthly donors or team members increase their gift. We'd love for you to be part of our monthly giving team or invite someone else to join you. Every dollar goes to providing much-needed food and connections to resources for those in need.
