New Yorkers formed a quarter-mile-long line to pick up donated food this weekend, as the effects of the coronavirus continue to reverberate across the Big Apple.
The New York Post reported that a line of hungry people in Queens wrapped around city blocks before the sun had completely risen on Saturday to get to a food pantry truck.
“It reminds me of the picture from the Great Depression where a man in a suit and tie is giving another man in a suit and tie an apple. That’s all he had,” La Jornada food pantry’s Pedro Rodriguez told the outlet. “We give all we have, but that’s not enough.”
La Jornada food pantry typically gave groceries to 1,000 families a week, but then the pandemic struck.
The food pantry is now feeding roughly 10,000 families a week, and giving 1,000 people lunch each day, according to the New York Post.
“We feel like we are underwater, drowning in a tsunami of people,” Rodriguez said. “This isn’t like a little rain coming down. The numbers are unbelievable.”
Many of the people in line are immigrants from China and Mexico, and reach from hungry seniors to young children, according to the New York Post.
New York City is currently facing down a budget crisis and an exodus of businesses and people from the city, sparked by the coronavirus.
Mayor Bill de Blasio warned earlier this month that 22,000 city employees could be laid off come October due to the economic hit associated with the coronavirus pandemic without a plan to relieve the city financially.
“The overwhelming cost of local government is personnel. Where we put our money is into the people who provide services to New Yorkers, whether they’re first responders, healthcare workers, sanitation workers, educators, you name it,” de Blasio told reporters, repeating a warning he first made in June.
New York City lost $9 billion in tax revenue during the last fiscal year after the coronavirus sparked an economic downturn.
Retailers and other business owners in the city have also felt the financial pinch of the pandemic and have closed their doors, in some cases for good.
J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway, and Le Pain Quotidien permanently closed their locations in the heart of Manhattan, the New York Times reported earlier this summer. Other large chains, such as Victoria’s Secret, TGI Friday’s, and Gap, still have their Manhattan locations but are keeping them closed even as they reopen locations in other areas.
“People are fleeing the city in droves,” Moon Salahie, owner of Elite Moving & Storing in Yonkers, said of residents leaving. “The least movement would be the Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue crowds. Those people don’t have to leave because they have second homes.”
