Fighting Hunger for our LGBTQ+ Neighbors

Food Bank For New York City’s 2022 Pride Month theme is #ProudlyFed. For us, this means we not only serve the estimated 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ New Yorkers struggling to put food on the table, but that we do it with joy, love, and pride. We also recognize that food insecurity in the LGBTQ+ community is often compounded by things like workplace discrimination, healthcare inequality, and housing insecurity. A citywide survey conducted in 2017 found that over 18 percent of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers had experienced homelessness, with these numbers soaring up to 60 percent for individuals who identified as Black, Hispanic, transgender, or gender non-conforming. Over 20 percent of respondents also reported that they had been denied a promotion, not hired, or been forced to resign from a job due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. To address these diverse and varied challenges, we partner with and distribute food to community-based organizations that not only feed our LGBTQ+ neighbors, but work to provide them with free legal services, educational opportunities, healthcare enrollment assistance, and nutrition workshops. One such organization is Make the Road New York, a Food Bank member agency that serves immigrant, working-class, and transgender communities throughout Brooklyn and Queens. Make the Road doesn’t shy away from difference; on the contrary, the group finds power in bringing together New Yorkers from all different walks of life to advocate for collective change. To learn more about the group’s unique approach to service, we spoke with Mateo Guerrero-Tabares, the Trans Justice and Leadership Program Manager at Make the Road New York. Mateo pictured at Make the Road New York’s office in Queens. Photo credit: Feeding America. Mateo found his way to Make the Road in 2010 after arriving in New York City as an undocumented minor. He began his journey as both a client and volunteer, receiving aid from the organization to adjust his immigration status and stay permanently in the United States. Make the Road quickly became a “political home” for Mateo and was one of the first public spaces in which he felt comfortable embracing his identity as a transgender man. As he told us: “It was very special to be able to say, ‘Mateo, he/they pronouns’ and be uplifted and cared for in such a beautiful way.” Volunteers working the weekly food distribution at Make the Road New York. Photo credit: Feeding America. Now, in his role as the organization’s Trans Justice and Leadership Program Manager, he’s working to bring that same level of solidarity and support to the immigrant and transgender New Yorkers he serves, especially when it comes to providing them with reliable access to fresh, nutritious food. In fact, Mateo started a special “bike brigade” at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver groceries to nearly 400 families a week. It was a way to sustain the sense of togetherness that has long fueled Make the Road’s mission to build a more equitable future for New York City’s most marginalized residents. “I want our members to be able to define what it means to exist in New York — and not just survive — but have a dignified life,” he said. “That sense of pride comes from a place of resiliency and community.” Mateo pictured at Make the Road New York’s office in Queens. Photo credit: Feeding America. We couldn’t be prouder to partner with and provide food to organizations like Make the Road New York that put our LGBTQ+ neighbors first. For more on how we serve these New Yorkers now and throughout the year, click this link. You can also donate directly to our Pride Month fundraising campaign to help raise crucial funds for organizations just like Make the Road. Give here. *** A special thanks to Feeding America for partnering with us on a suite of stories featuring LGBTQ-serving agencies in our extensive member network of over 800 food pantries, soup kitchens, and campus partners across the five boroughs. View the stories here.

This Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we want to highlight the realities of food insecurity in the AAPI community. Though pop culture may have us believe that all Asian people are highly educated, wealthy, and high-achieving, the truth is that hunger and poverty don’t discriminate, and do in fact affect Pacific Islander and Asian communities all across the United States, including the ones we serve here in New York. According to the latest census estimates from 2019, there are over 1 million people who identify as either “Asian” or “Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander” in New York City. This accounts for approximately 14 percent of the city’s total population, signaling an immense and significant presence across the five boroughs. However, this presence isn’t monolithic, and is made up of dozens of different ethnic groups who may or may not have that much in common aside from checking “Asian” on the census. So, understanding what hunger looks like in the AAPI community is all about recognizing not only the diversity of the acronym itself, but the vast spectrum of need housed within it. As a recent report from the Food Research & Action Center points out, the AAPI community is both the fastest growing racial group in the United States and the one with the fastest growing (and widest!) wealth gap. This means that the AAPI community is the most economically divided racial group in the country. Per the FRAC report: “Compared to other racial groups, [AAPI] is small, so when it is included, it tends to be under sampled and erroneously treated as a homogeneous group. These missteps often lead to results that hide the high levels of inequalities and inequities between [AAPI] subgroups, and give a false impression that there are no or few [AAPI] individuals, families, and communities in need of SNAP and other social safety net programs.” In New York City, the need for these social safety net programs is at an all-time high. According to Robin Hood (NYC’s largest poverty-tracking organization), poverty amongst Asian New Yorkers is the fastest growing in the city and is 15-25 percent higher than the city average. As of this writing, over 245,000 Asian New Yorkers are living in poverty, which constitutes nearly 25 percent of the city’s entire Asian population. To combat these inequities, Food Bank partners with organizations across the five boroughs to help Asian Americans and new immigrants enroll in social safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). But, as Food Bank’s Network Resource Specialist Yuanjing “Jeff” Lin explained to me, enrollment isn’t always as easy as filing a simple form. “The AAPI community encompasses so many different cultures, languages, and origins, so language can be a major roadblock for people,” he said. “Though the city provides some translations for languages spoken by AAPI people [currently Chinese, Korean, and Bengali], there are still so many languages and dialects that are left out.” And even when these translations do exist, Lin says that they don’t always provide further clarity for people. Terms that appear on these forms (like, “household compensation,” for example) may be literally translatable, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily make sense in someone’s native tongue. Therefore, folks often have to have these forms explained to them regardless of the language they’re in. As Lin puts it: “A lot of my work is translating the translation to people, trying to break it down into a simple conversation that they can understand.” This work becomes even more difficult once the government sends back their official approval or rejection letters to the submitted SNAP forms. Why? Well, regardless of the form’s original language, these government letters almost always arrive in English. “Clients will bring me piles of paper and say, ‘Can you let me know if I need to take action?’ You keep receiving papers from the government, but you don’t know what to do with them. Some of my clients bring their children with them, so first we talk to the kids and make them understand in English, then they have to try their best to explain these really complex topics in their own language to their parents... we have to go through multiple layers of barriers.” And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of roadblocks, complications, and hurdles non-English speaking AAPI folks may face when trying to access the benefits they need. To surmount these obstacles, Lin says it’s imperative to invest in community-based organizations that can provide personalized translations and resources to different ethnic groups within the AAPI community. One such organization is the Tzu Chi Foundation, a partner agency of ours that provides SNAP enrollment services to folks in Flushing, Chinatown, and Sunset Park. They also distribute culturally appropriate vegetarian meals and pantry goods on a recurring weekly basis. To learn more about how Tzu Chi brings specialized assistance to the Chinese communities they serve, check out the video below. Hunger isn’t something that discriminates by race. It affects all sorts of people, including those who identify as Asian and Pacific Islander. By obscuring this fact with harmful stereotypes and misinformation, we miss out on the opportunity to serve those who need us most. But if we invest in robust translation services at the government level and prioritize funding for community-based organizations that can tailor their programming to the unique needs of their people, we can begin to address the growing issue of food-insecurity in the AAPI community.