NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — New York City’s largest food rescue organization, City Harvest, regularly hosts nine Mobile Markets that provide fresh fruit and vegetables to communities in need across the five boroughs, and WCBS 880 attended the distribution at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Houses on Wednesday morning.
According to the True Cost of Living report, 50% of working-age households struggle to make ends meet in the city, which means that three million New Yorkers are not making enough to cover NYC’s minimum cost of living, including basics like food, rent and utilities.
“My family, we are low-income, so it definitely helps us out a lot. Being here to provide us with extra food, especially now during inflation. It’s very hard to access food and it’s very expensive and it definitely feels like it’s a great help,” Tompkins Houses resident Natu Bamba, who grew up eating food through City Harvest and has a family of four, told WCBS 880.
When compared to data from 2019, City Harvest said that average monthly visits to food pantries and soup kitchens in NYC are up 82%, with Black and Hispanic New Yorkers being more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity as their white neighbors. Mobile Markets, placed strategically across NYC, work to lower these numbers.
The Bed-Stuy Mobile Market is held on the first Saturday and third Wednesday of each month from 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. at the Tompkins Houses on Myrtle Avenue, and the only eligibility requirement to receive food is being a Brooklyn resident.
“Unlike a typical pantry … you go to each station and receive food based on your household size, and you get to choose what you want,” Pedro Urbaez, associate director of direct and community distributions at City Harvest, told WCBS 880. “Some folks don’t want everything we are giving out, so you get a little bit more autonomy and dignity in the process.”
Mobile Markets are organized like an outdoor farmers’ market, and function differently than a typical pantry, which would have the entire distribution set up. The market system allows people to walk around, pick and choose, and learn from on-site nutrition experts.
At all Mobile Markets, the nutrition education team is in place to do cooking demonstrations with some of the items being handed out, and provide recipes so people can try different cooking styles at home. Urbaez said that it lets people know “how they can do this in a way that is not always fried, and do it in a healthy manner.”
Last year, the Mobile Markets program served more than 111,000 New Yorkers in need. The program will mark its 20th anniversary in October.
There is one Mobile Market in Staten Island and two in each of the other four boroughs that are held twice a month. The only eligibility requirement to receive food is to be a resident of the borough where the market is being held.
For a full list of Mobile Market locations and times, and more information about City Harvest, visit the organization’s website.