Introduction
Emergency food providers, such as food pantries and soup kitchens, play a critical role in addressing the needs of individuals and households who are experiencing food insecurity, supporting those who are moderately food insecure and staving off hunger and malnourishment among individuals and households who are severely food insecure. New York City has an extensive system of emergency food pantries and soup kitchens across the five boroughs. However, the location of a food pantry does not mean that it meets the needs of the surrounding community. Specific locations, hours of operation, scale, and types of food available vary significantly, and may not correspond to local levels of food insecurity, raising questions about whether certain neighborhoods or populations in need of emergency food are receiving sufficient nutrition support. Visualizing different aspects of the emergency food pantry system can enable data-driven decision making for investments and interventions to enhance local emergency food resources.
Service Sufficiency
One basic question is whether food pantries are in the neighborhoods that need them the most and whether they are open days and hours during the week that make them logistically accessible to those in need. To begin to answer questions about accessibility, we mapped Feeding America's estimated 2019 levels of food insecurity by census tract throughout New York City and overlayed the locations of emergency food pantries (indicated by the dots on the map) based on data gathered by the organization Hunger Free America. Overall, the map shows that pantries are located throughout the city and are, for the most part, clustered in places with high levels of food insecurity, though there are significant exceptions, like the communities of Coney Island or the West Bronx, where pantries are sparse or non-existent despite high levels of food insecurity.
While the presence of a food pantry in a neighborhood with food insecure residents is critical, the hours of operation of these pantries varies significantly. Using the check boxes and drop-down menu on the dashboard below it is possible to filter the pantries by the number of weekdays they are open, the total number of hours open during a given week, and whether pantries are open on weekends when working households are more likely to have time to pick up food. By changing these variables, dashboard users can see that few pantries are open multiple weekdays, for many hours overall, and on weekends. For households with working adults, or members with variable work schedules, access to a neighborhood food pantry when they are open might be difficult if not impossible. This map does not indicate whether individual pantries have sufficient food to meet demand, whether the food is desirable or healthy, or any other aspects of the quality of the pantry or its food.
Distance Traveled to Food Pantries
Overlaying the locations of food pantries and their hours with food insecurity levels can show ease of access to emergency food among those in need. Another way to measure access is to look at whether people use the pantries located in their own neighborhood or travel to different neighborhoods to get food. We mapped data from 2019 collected by a digital food pantry reservation system called Plentiful that allows clients of a select group of participating food pantries to make reservations on an app to pick up food at specific pantries. The reservation system records the home zip code of each client and the location of the pantry they traveled to for food.
In the dashboard below, the top left map shows the number of pantries in the Plentiful system by zip code. You can filter the map to identify how many Plentiful pantries are in each zip code. The map on the right shows the percentage of clients in each zip code who leave their own zip code to pick up emergency food at a Plentiful pantry in a different neighborhood. This map allows filtering by the percentage of all clients who leave their zip code to access emergency food and the percentage of those who have incomes at or below two times the federal poverty level who leave their own neighborhood for emergency food.
The graph below the maps shows the percentage of clients who leave their zip code by the number of emergency food pantries within their own zip code and the percentage who are at or below 200% of the federal poverty level and thus are likely to have a great need for emergency food. This graph illustrates that even in neighborhoods with five existing food pantries, 80% or more of low-income residents leave their neighborhood to get emergency food from a food pantry located in another zip code. The data raise questions about what factors in some zip codes drive clients to other neighborhoods. Possible factors may include over-burdened pantries, pantries with limited hours, pantries stocking food considered poor quality or not culturally-appropriate, or insufficient quantities or varieties of food. Additional data is needed to capture the dimensions of the emergency food system that drive people to seek food outside of their own communities, and whether there are people in need of emergency food who, due to mobility limitations and time constraints, are not able to access the food they need or desire for their households.
Potential Use Cases
Some emergency food pantries may be able to use these data to consider possible changes in hours of service or the type and quantity of food available for distribution. For advocates and city officials, data on where people go for emergency food could lead to resource reallocation and support for new or expanded emergency food services where needed. Questions raised by the data, such as why people choose some pantries over others, suggest the need for research about levels of satisfaction among those who depend on the emergency food system.