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City Harvest Advocacy team at City Hall with signs.

Advocacy Highlights 2024

Advocacy Season 2024

With the New York City FY25 budget passed on July 1, City Harvest closes out a remarkable year of anti-hunger advocacy! This year’s success couldn’t have been made possible without expansions to our advocacy strategy, strengthened relationships with lawmakers, strong collaboration with anti-hunger organizations, and emergent leaders in our pantry network. Thanks to advocates like you, we have seen strong wins in both the City and State budget and the protection of programs that fight hunger on all levels of government.

At a time when 50% of working-age households in New York City struggle to make ends meet and pantry visits are up 75% compared to 2019 (that’s 1 million more visits), your support for our advocacy campaigns was and is deeply important for our fight against hunger. Below are some of the outcomes that you contributed to in our most recent year of advocacy.

 

Budget Highlights

  • $5.5M increase

    in funding for New York State-sourced food for food pantries through the NourishNY & the Hunger Prevention & Nutrition Assistance Program, reaching a total of $112M for New York’s food pantry network in FY25.

  • $350M expansion

    to New York State’s Empire State Child Credit (ESCC), providing an automatic supplemental tax credit that will be issued to eligible families later this year. 

  • Advanced State legislation

    that shifts preferences for government food contracts from the lowest bidder to values-based vendor selection that weighs the producer’s consideration of the environment, workers and consumers (i.e. hospital patients).

  • Extended $1.175M

    in City Council funding for community programs supporting new New Yorkers seeking asylum through the Welcome NYC Initiative. 

  • Restored nearly $60M

    in funding for the city’s primary emergency food supply program, Community Food Connection, protecting the program for its initial proposed 54% cut. 

  • Preserved NYC SNAP

    enrollment staff and Department of Education Office of Food & Nutrition funding. 

  • Protected SNAP choice and dignity

    in the last federal Continued Resolution by rejecting measures that would further limit what foods can be purchased with SNAP. 

  • Increased momentum and bi-partisan support

    for the Hot Meals Act to be included in the Farm Bill. If passed, it would allow people to purchase hot and prepared meals with their SNAP benefits. 

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