Bloomberg Ignores Eligibility of Children, Seniors, and the Disabled; Advocates Criticize His Statement That "Nobody's Starving to Death"

In a radio interview Friday with John Gambling on WABC-AM, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg mistakenly said that the federal Food Stamp Program was limited almost entirely to adults who worked, when the clear majority of program recipients are actually children, seniors, and people with disabilities who are not currently working.

In the interview, the Mayor said: “You have to work to get – for generally, there are some exceptions – but you have to work to get food stamps. And that’s the program. So if people aren’t working, they’re just not eligible for this.” Yet over half of program participants nationally are children and another eight percent are seniors, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. While the percentage of program participants with jobs has risen to a historic high (29%), the reality is that single, childless adults who are required to work constitute a small portion of program participants. Out of the 1,087,115 people in New York City currently receiving food stamp benefits, at least 700,000 (65%), are children, seniors, or people with disabilities, according to an estimate by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

In the same interview, the Mayor also praised the City “social service agencies" that process food stamp benefits, giving the impression that he may be unaware that only one City agency – the Human Resources Administration (HRA) – is responsible for processing such benefits.

“It is troubling indeed that – despite years of high-profile attention to the Food Stamp Program by elected officials, the media, and advocates – the Mayor doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of how the program is supposed to work and which of his appointees manages it,” said Coalition executive director Joel Berg. “He seems to be saying that children, seniors, and disabled people aren't eligible for this vital, federally-funded nutrition benefit, even though many are. Ironically, both his rhetoric and his policies regarding Food Stamp Program access are more conservative than the Bush and Pataki Administrations.”

The Mayor also said, "Nobody is starving to death," a statement criticized by advocates for glossing over the fact that large numbers of New Yorkers are forced to reduce their food intake for themselves and their children in order to pay for the high cost of rent, health care, transportation, and child care.

More than 1.2 million New York City residents – including 417,000 children – live in households that lacked sufficient food in 2004, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by the Coalition Against Hunger. Nearly half of the city's more than 1,200 food pantries and soup kitchens were forced to ration food in 2005 – reducing their hours of operation, limiting portion size, and/or turning away hungry New Yorkers – according to a Coalition study.

"While the Mayor is technically correct that, thank goodness, we don't have people starving in our streets, that's a pretty low threshold to brag about," responded Berg. "Federal data shows that more than 700,000 adults in the city don't have enough food, thereby making it harder for them to obtain and keep employment and properly raise children. More than 400,000 children live in food insecurity, facing stunted physical and emotional growth, poorer performance in school, and harsher future work prospects and health outcomes. Given these facts – and the additional fact that New York City now has the highest concentration of wealth in any city in world history – the Mayor shouldn't be taking comfort in the fact that hunger in New York isn't as bad as in Sudan or North Korea. It is of great personal pain to me that this Mayor – who seems to really 'get it' when it comes to the need for affordable housing and child care and quality education – just doesn't 'get it' when it comes to hunger."

Numerous non-profit and government reports indicate 600-700,000 low-income New Yorkers are eligible for – but not currently receiving – food stamp benefits. When asked about this on the radio show, the Mayor responded, “I don’t know where any of these numbers come from.” Yet Mayor Bloomberg's own yearly Management Report, released on September 14, indicates that the City failed to meet its internal targets for increasing Food Stamp Program access, missing the goal by 41,000 people. City data also shows that, over the past 11 years, the number of people receiving food stamp benefits in the city plummeted by more than 371,185 people (25%). In contrast, in the last few years that the City has been publishing data on the use of city-funded food pantries and soup kitchens, the use of such charities has increased, thereby proving the need for food stamps benefits is still increasing.

Continued Berg, "Over the past five years, advocates have repeatedly written detailed letters to the Mayor citing hard data from the federal, state, and city governments about the increasing hunger here and the tremendous underutilization of the Food Stamp Program due to barriers imposed by the Mayor's administration. The New York City Public Advocate and the City Council have repeatedly published reports – which they have forwarded to the Mayor and his appointees – that independently came to similar conclusions. The city's news media has frequently done their own reporting verifying these trends. Plus, for five years, the Mayor has steadfastly refused our repeated invitations to join us in visiting one of the city's more than 1,200 food pantries or soup kitchens. Perhaps most surprising, the Mayor doesn't even seem to know the details of his own management report. When the Mayor says he doesn't know where numbers about hunger come from, we can only conclude he is willfully ignoring the problem. The bottom line is that you can't fix a problem if you don't admit it exists."

Advocates also challenged the Mayor's implication that food stamp benefits promote "dependency." Said Berg, "Most people need food stamp benefits for only short periods of time when they are most down on their luck. Of those few do receive benefits for long periods of time, many are working but simply don't earn enough to feed their families. Besides, food stamp benefits in New York City now provide an allocation of only $1.23 per meal. Given that the Mayor supported tens of millions of dollars in corporate welfare going to Goldman Sachs and large hand-outs to stadium-builders, it is frustrating indeed that he begrudges children, seniors, and working adults for obtaining meager nutrition support paid for by the federal government."