By Daniel Massey
Staring at a few cartons of Parmalat milk and a couple of cases of canned beets, Tony Miranda shook his head and wondered how he would be able to continue feeding the more than 250 families that rely on Richmond Hill’s Elohim Christian Church for food each week.
“This is all that’s left in my reserve,” said Miranda, the director of the church’s food pantry. “My numbers have gone up, but my food supply has not.”
The slow economy and the loss of nearly 80,000 jobs citywide since the attack on the World Trade Center have heightened demand for the food parcels Miranda hands out each Sunday at the church.
“Our numbers skyrocketed right after 9/11,” Miranda said Sunday. “There are a lot of undocumented people in this area that worked in and around the World Trade Center and they have nowhere to go.”
Before the Twin Towers collapsed, the pantry served 2,200 people a week, Miranda said. Last month, the number of people provided with food more than doubled to 4,700, he said.
People like Olga Cardenas of Woodhaven have only recently started visiting the church each Sunday to collect pantry bags filled with such items as canned beets and tomatoes, frozen carrots, applesauce, instant potatoes, cereal, soup and milk.
Cardenas is one of 79,700 people who are expected to be laid off citywide by year’s end due to the attack on the World Trade Center, according to a report by the Manhattan-based Fiscal Policy Institute.
The mother of three worked in the maintenance division at Chelsea Piers on the West Side of Manhattan prior to Sept. 11. “I got laid off because of what happened at the World Trade Center,” she said. “It’s been difficult to live since Sept. 11, but this food is a big help.”
Lauren Vasquez of Ozone Park visited the food pantry for the first time Sunday. She worked as a temporary legal secretary, but has been unable to find employment since the attacks. “I’m not working and I can’t afford food,” she said. “I search every day in different shops for a job, but it’s too difficult now.”
Fatima Perez, a Richmond Hill mother of three whose full-time job selling chandeliers in Lower Manhattan was turned into a part-time one after Sept. 11, said she has struggled to meet the basic needs of her family since the attack. “This helps so much,” she said.
The difficulties facing Miranda in feeding an expanding population of hungry New Yorkers mirror those plaguing food pantries across the city, according to a study released last week by Food for Survival, the city’s largest food bank.
Last month, Food for Survival distributed 28 percent more food to the city’s 1,200 community food programs than in October 2000, according to Lisa Jakobsberg, the organization’s spokeswoman. At the same time, donations from individual contributors declined by 30 percent in October compared with the same month last year, she said.
Lucy Cabrera, president and chief executive officer of Food for Survival, said the weakening economy and surge in unemployment resulted in “a huge number of ‘first-time users’ turning to food relief programs to put food on the tables for their families.”
The study showed that 64 percent of the New Yorkers receiving free food in the city since Sept. 11 were taking donations for the first time. A majority of these first-time clients were single mothers, the study said.
On Sunday, many of those who lined up outside the Elohim Church confirmed the results of the Food for Survival study. While some said they had been visiting the food pantry since it opened in January, most of those questioned said they had been receiving free food for just a few weeks.
Miranda said he is committed to providing pantry bags to every person who arrives at the church’s doorstep, but he does not want to be a “constant source of food” for the needy. “If I continue doing that, I’m not doing any service to them.”
The director has plans to incorporate English and GED classes into the food program and on Sunday he had an immigration specialist on hand to answer any questions clients had.
But for now, Miranda’s biggest challenge is meeting the basic needs of the hundreds who line up at his door each weekend. By 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon, volunteers had to prepare extra pantry bags because turnout had been heavier than expected.
Miranda said he does not know how he is going to keep up with the increasing demand for food.
“I’m in the process of writing to Pathmark and Walgreens and the Salvation Army to see if they have anything to donate to us,” he said. “Anything they can do. Right now I just don’t know where else to turn.”
Reach reporter Daniel Massey by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
