Since the pandemic, one in every three New York City residents has used a food pantry, according to a recent study from Robin Hood and Columbia University. Here, City Limits rounds up a list of where people can find food assistance and other anti-hunger resources.
NYC Council/John McCarten
A turkey giveaway in 2019.
Next week, many New Yorkers will sit down to home-cooked Thanksgiving meals. But many others won’t be able to, or will struggle to afford doing so—a stark reality in a city where high cost of living, inflation and other factors fuel food insecurity year-round.
That need has only increased in recent years: One in every three New York City residents reported using a food pantry during the three years following the pandemic, according to a report released earlier this week from Robin Hood and Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. For families with children, the rate was even higher, with 40 percent saying they’d relied on a pantry to meet their food needs.
“Our lines have been longer than ever. We’re seeing more families than we ever saw, and it’s just a consistent volume that is unheard of in over 40 years of existence,” said Judy Secon, deputy executive director at NY Common Pantry, which runs food pantries in East Harlem and the Bronx, as well a hot meals program for people experiencing homelessness.
The organization served 6 million meals to people during the pandemic, Secon said, and the numbers have grown each year since then. “This year, we are on track to serve over 12 million meals,” she said, attributing the uptick in part to inflation, the clawback of pandemic-era increases in SNAP (food stamp) benefits in 2023, and cost of living in New York.
“It’s just hard to live in the city on the wages that people make, because they’re not really living wages, and with housing costs as high as they are, it’s just very difficult,” Secon said.
This week, NY Common Pantry is giving away Thanksgiving food, including turkeys and chickens, to over 10,000 families.
“It’s a lot of food,” Secon said. “We do this because obviously people we serve who are food insecure don’t really have the means to be able to provide their family with a traditional Thanksgiving meal, and so we really feel it’s important to be able to do that, to create normalcy for their lives.”
Below, City Limits has rounded up a list of food assistance resources—some of them Thanksgiving-specific, and others available year-round.
Know of a program or event we should add? Email [email protected].
Resources for food assistance:
- For help finding resources by phone, call the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA’s) National Hunger Hotline, which operates from 7 a.m.–10 p.m. Eastern Time: 1-866-3-HUNGRY for English, and 1-877-8-HAMBRE for Spanish.
- You can also call 311 and ask for the nearest food resources.
- The city’s Food Help NYC website allows users to search a map of resources including food banks, pantries and soup kitchens:
- To see if you qualify and to apply for SNAP, or food stamp benefits, call the city’s Human Resources Administration at 718-557-1399 to have a paper application mailed to you. To apply online, visit the Access HRA website. To apply in person, visit one of the city’s SNAP centers.
- Hunter College’s NYC Food Policy Center has created food resource guides, broken down for each of the city’s 59 community districts:
- Plentiful is an app you can download onto your phone to search for food assistance programs, get information on hours and reserve a spot in line:
- Food Bank for NYC has a citywide map of food assistance programs and resources:
- Hunger Free America has neighborhood-specific resource guides, available in languages like Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese and Polish:
Upcoming Thanksgiving-specific events:
- The Common Pantry will host a restaurant-style Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, Nov. 27 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at its location at 8 East 109th St. in Manhattan. More here.
- Lenox Hill Neighborhood House on the Upper East Side will host a first-come, first-served turkey giveaway on Tuesday, Nov. 26 at its headquarters at 331 East 70th St, New York, NY 10021). To participate, folks should call Council Member Julie Menin’s office at (212) 860-1950 to sign up.
- State Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman will host a Thanksgiving celebration at P.S. 135 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Saturday, Nov. 23 starting at 11 a.m. It will include workshops, performances—including an appearance by Busta Rhymes—and a turkey giveaway from 1 to 2:30 p.m., or while supplies last. RSVP is required. More here.
- Queens State Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar will host a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway at her office at 83-91 Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens on Saturday, Nov. 23 starting at 2 p.m.. First come, first served until supplies last.
- Queens City Councilmember Francisco Moya will hold three first come, first serve turkey giveaways in East Elmhurst and Corona on Nov. 22 and 23. More info here.
- State Sen. Cordell Cleare will hold a Thanksgiving turkey and produce giveaway for residents of the 30th Senate District in Harlem and Upper Manhattan (find a district map here). Residents are encouraged to reserve their food in advance by filling out the form here.
- QNS.com has a thorough roundup of turkey and meal giveaways across Queens.
- Brooklyn Magazine as a list of free turkey events in the borough.