By Jessica Easthope
Sani Mites’ head swirls with uncertainty as she waits for her number to be called at St. John’s Bread & Life food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
She and her kids are hungry. She’s been on disability since she was hit by a stray bullet last year while she was pregnant with her son. The roughly $1,000 per month she gets from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, goes toward buying all of their food, diapers and essentials — and soon it will be gone.
“My mind is just blown right now. I don’t know where my mind is just going. It’s like I’m going crazy right now,” Mites said. “I feel like the people that don’t have a job in the shelter and stuff like that shouldn’t be able to get benefits and stuff like that. Right now, I feel like I’m struggling.”
Government assistance programs announced that SNAP recipients will be doing without for at least the month of November. The current government shutdown is forcing federal aid to a halt. And desperation is setting in — for Mites and 3 million others across New York State.
“The shelter I’m in is a cooking facility, so I’m going to need my benefits to get food and stuff to cook for my kids and my sibling. I already have anxiety and stuff like that. So it’s just making it even more worse,” she continued.
At Bread & Life, it’s business as usual — for now. 85% percent of their clientele receive some type of government assistance. The pantry has already seen an 11% uptick in visits this month and now is bracing for a tidal wave of need.
“What we are very, very concerned about will be if things get worse, how to manage the resources that we have,” Sister Marie Sorenson, associate executive director of St. John’s Bread & Life, told Currents News. “Right now, this is a crisis that we’re in, and I think we’re not seeing the end of it yet.”
This year Bread & Life has been dealing with its own deficit — nearly $1 million less in government funding. It sustains 28 other pantries that are bound to see the 1 in 5 New York City residents who lean on SNAP when they become a sole source of food.
“Hunger is not waiting for Washington. People need to eat. Children need to eat,” Sister Caroline Tweedy, executive director of St. John’s Bread & Life, explained. “And the people making the decisions have never been on a food pantry line.”
For Mites and hundreds of thousands of other clients on SNAP, Bread & Life isn’t a pantry — it’s a promise kept.
“This isn’t about politics. This is about feeding people who are hungry. It’s about the gospel,” Sister Caroline Tweedy added. “Open up the government so that those that don’t have a voice will, at least have food on the table and a place to live.”
“I already go through anxiety, and this is making it even worse,” Mites said.
The shutdown — which began on Oct. 1 — is now the second longest on record.
If you want to help St. John’s Bread & Life, just go to its website — breadandlife.org.