”Įvery borough has seen visits to food pantries and soup kitchens go up during the pandemic, but not all have been affected equally. “That's really what we believe is driving this increase in the number of visits to food pantries across the city. “We began to see some drops in visits to food pantries across the five boroughs late last year, but New Yorkers were definitely hit very hard by inflation and the expiration of vital government supports like the child tax credits,” said Jilly Stephens, CEO of City Harvest.

The trends mirror what’s happening nationally. The prices in grocery stores are rising faster than in restaurants, where prices have only increased 7.5%. But City Harvest suspects the rising cost of food and other goods may be forcing demand to stay high, as the use of emergency food resources in the city has started rebounding over the past six months.ĭue to inflation and a combination of other global factors, prices for at-home food have gone up nearly 12% in the New York City-metro area over the past year, according to the U.S. The number of visits is down from a pandemic peak of more than 4.1 million in March 2021. That’s up 68% from the first half of 2019. In the first half of 2022, New Yorkers visited food pantries and soup kitchens about 3.5 million times per month, on average, according to City Harvest. As the city is slowly bouncing back, the number of people in need of emergency food has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, according to new data from the food rescue organization City Harvest. Food insecurity in New York City soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people lost work and steady income.

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