Finding Comfort and Food on Lines

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This is the time for food lines. No, not the ones where people wait to buy artisanal cheeses, organic turkeys and handmade pies for Thanksgiving. It’s the time for food lines because the end of the month is near, which for many families means their food stamp allotment has run out and dollars are tight.

Most working New Yorkers don’t actually see these lines because they are too busy working. But scattered throughout the city, like latter-day versions of Depression photos, grandmothers and children, men and women wait hours for a bag of groceries at a food pantry. Many of the hungriest are children and the elderly. And many have jobs whose hours and salaries have been cut.

Mind you, they are the lucky ones.

“So many of the people using the food pantries are doing the right thing, and still it’s not enough,” said Joey O’Loughlin, a Brooklyn photographer who has been documenting hunger in the city. “They are the people around you, the workers in your building, the air-conditioning guy, the people in the stores where you shop, the housekeepers, nurses, municipal workers. But when I tell people, they are surprised and don’t believe it.”

Joey O’Loughlin The line at the Action Center pantry, which was founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, in Far Rockaway. Aug. 10.

This is not unexpected in a city where the gap between haves and have-nots is wide. But while the persistent image of the hungry in New York is that of the bedraggled, single homeless man, the real faces of need look much different, said Margarette Purvis, the president and chief executive of Food Bank For New York City. The food bank enlisted Ms. O’Loughlin to document its work, which includes not just feeding people but also offering help with an array of social and financial services.

Her group estimates that 2.6 million New Yorkers have problems buying food. While homeless men were their target population when the group began its efforts 30 years ago, children now account for 500,000 of their clients each year. Another fast-growing group, Ms. Purvis said, was elderly residents on fixed incomes. They, and working adults who cut back on food in order to meet rising rents, are the faces her group wanted to highlight to combat the myths about hunger.

“Myths can be comforting,” Ms. Purvis said. “Who wants to believe you can work your whole life and end up not being able to afford food? You want to believe those people had to have had something go wrong with them, in order for them to end up in that place. It’s scary to think you work two jobs and not be able to afford food.”

Joey O’Loughlin At the Mid-Bronx Family Preservation Center pantry, Thanksgiving came in May.

Ms. O’Loughlin came to the attention of the Food Bank For New York City after she photographed another project about a misunderstood and underfinanced institution, the public library. Much more than just a place to borrow books, libraries have also become job centers, literacy centers, citizenship preparation centers and more. Ms. O’Loughlin’s photos, which followed borrowers and their books to their homes, provided elusive insights.

Ms. O’Loughlin finds parallels between the projects.

“Seeing how they live showed how the libraries touched people,” she said. “The really smart people are the ones trying to better their lives and take advantage of what programs are there, whether it is the food bank or the library. It reminds me of the public school system where parents are on top of it.”

From Brooklyn to the Bronx, in churches and community centers, she found a range of food pantries: from well-stocked, efficiently run operations to mom-and-pop outfits where good intentions exceeded capacity. What they had in common was need, with people waiting three hours or more for a bag of basic grocery items. Meat was a treat. In some places, baby formula and diapers were among the necessities handed out.

Ms. O’Loughlin said that while most of the places she visited limited people to a monthly allotment, more resourceful people trekked to different pantries around the city. Following them home, she saw scenes where people huddled in building lobbies to trade food items or went upstairs to share with homebound neighbors. She also found that some people were better at whipping up something tasty with even the most limited of ingredients.

But she also saw the ripple effects of the economic downturn, which sent people looking for food. Workers whose jobs depended on the spending of others found themselves hit hard.

“There was one couple, a guy who was a contractor who had been successful during the boom,” she said. “But his business fell apart. His wife had been a nanny who made a good salary, but she was not able to get another job after she had her own baby. The little things that used to be manageable have become more insurmountable.”

That includes apathy on the part of fellow New Yorkers who would rather believe people are gaming the system than surviving in an otherwise-gilded city, Ms. O’Loughlin said.

“This is something that is easy to walk by,” she said. “There should be outrage. Is this who we really want to be?”

Keep that in mind when you see a grandmother standing outside a church pantry with an empty shopping cart, not just this week, but every week. And keep in mind that for all her need, there is also gratitude for what she gets  and what she gives: comfort food.

“For a grandmother, if you can still give the family a nice meal, you’re still nurturing,” Ms. O’Loughlin said. “You are fortifying people to deal with these circumstances. How are you supposed to deal with all this stuff if you don’t have any comfort?”

Joey O’Loughlin Dinner made with pantry food simmered in Dina Garcia Torres’s apartment in the Bronx. Nov. 2.

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