Dressed in heels to run errands, or surrounded by tasteful art in her chicly decorated apartment, Delcina Williams maintains a public facade that defies her reality. She is by many measures destitute, reliant on food stamps and an $1,100 monthly Social Security check that she said leaves her with only a handful of dollars a day for food after rent, utilities and caring for her twin sister, who has Alzheimer’s.
Ms. Williams, 75, said she was once an editor for a fashion magazine and a doo-wop singer. She and her twin, Doreena Davidson, are breast cancer survivors. But now Ms. Williams spends her days going from food bank to food bank, seeking navy beans and split peas for soup — a meal that can stretch after she inevitably runs out of money each month.
It is, she said, a demoralizing experience. And recent moves in Washington to cut federal funding for food benefits have filled many New Yorkers like Ms. Williams with mounting panic.
“It’s tearing me up already,” Ms. Williams said as she carted home 16 ounces of frozen ground beef, four cans of tuna fish, scallions and oranges from the Food Bank for NYC Community Kitchen and Pantry on West 116th Street in Harlem. “Every month I’m praying to my bank account.”
A new bill championed by President Trump calls for cutting $295 billion in federal spending over the next decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Williams said. “I know he doesn’t need it, but the rest of us do.”
More than 65 percent of food pantry users are employed, according to the Poverty Tracker by Robin Hood, an anti-poverty group, and Columbia University. Experts say that is a reflection of the city’s affordability crisis. Average monthly visits to pantries and soup kitchens have shot up 85 percent since 2019, according to an analysis of FeedNYC data by City Harvest, a food rescue nonprofit. Almost three million New Yorkers struggle to put food on the table, according to data from Feeding America, a philanthropic organization.
On top of surging demand, food banks also anticipate increased prices because of tariffs on steel that have raised the cost of canned food.
But even as the need has skyrocketed, the banks’ ability to meet it has abruptly fallen. In March, the Department of Government Efficiency took aim at Biden-era initiatives that had provided over $1 billion in grants to states to buy local food. Trump administration-backed cuts of the Emergency Food Assistance Program hacked away millions of pounds of deliveries to food banks.
“I have honestly never been as concerned as I am now,” said Randi Dresner, the president and chief executive of Island Harvest Food Bank, which serves Long Island.
The $2 million grant program Island Harvest used to buy products from Long Island farmers, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, will end this summer instead of next as originally planned. No new grants will be issued after current funding expires. And the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal would eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and the more than $1 million the food bank uses to supply monthly food boxes to about 6,000 older people. Another $1.7 million that the organization was supposed to receive from the program this year was also frozen.
“There is a broad-brush cutting across all social services,” Ms. Dresner said. “That concerns me for our neighbors that are most vulnerable.”
The results of Trump administration policies have already been dramatic for food banks like the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which serves about 48 million meals a year — 20 million more than before the pandemic — according to Thomas A. Nardacci, the chief executive officer.
Every year, the Regional Food Bank receives 400 tractor-trailers of food from the U.S.D.A.’s emergency assistance program — strawberries from California, citrus from Florida and meat from the Midwest. But cuts to the program will slice the number of trucks in half, costing about 5.8 million meals. This year, 27 trailers, equal to about 750,000 meals, have already been canceled.
“The whole charitable food system, we are all living in fear right now,” Mr. Nardacci said. “Because the need is as high as ever.”
The potential cuts to food stamps are also a major concern. New rules would further restrict who is eligible and expand the group of recipients who are required to have jobs to qualify. The version of the bill approved by the House of Representatives also proposes to divert some of the costs of the program to the states.
Under the scheme, New York would have to bear about a quarter of the cost. “The idea that we would be punished by the federal government with a 25 percent cost share, which would cost us $1.8 billion, is really an existential threat to the idea of SNAP being a safety net,” said Nicole Hunt, the director of public policy and advocacy for Food Bank for NYC.
Food banks say they are scrambling.
“Which issue do you fight first?” said David G. Greenfield, the chief executive officer and executive director of Met Council, which provides kosher and halal food to over 600 distribution sites. “You are going to fight SNAP cuts that is going to reduce millions of meals around the country? Or do you fight the actual food cuts? Or do you fight the tariff challenges?
“It is like dealing with water from a fire hose.”
Many food bank leaders have been frantically lobbying Washington, they say, with little to show for their efforts. Recently, at a summit in Albany that was supposed to be about food procurement, anxiety about the proposed cuts dominated the conversation, Ms. Hunt said.
Zac Hall, the senior vice president of Food Bank for NYC’s programs, said, “The amount of void that will be created by these SNAP cuts is insurmountable.”
For people already on the edge, there is little room to absorb further cuts. Ms. Williams, who lives in public housing in Harlem with her twin sister, is trying to figure out how to survive.
As she stirred the black bean soup that she hoped would last them the week, Ms. Williams said she felt helpless. But there was something she could do: From her food pantry haul she removed a few loaves of French bread and some greens and hung the bag of produce on her neighbor’s door.
They need the help too.
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
The post ‘An Existential Threat’: Food Banks Brace for Fallout From Trump Cuts appeared first on New York Times.
