For the past two weeks, New Yorkers have faced heightened food insecurity. It has left the less fortunate scrambling for help from places like the Bronx food pantry. Unfortunately, even the pantry is feeling the insecurity as its shelves are bare for the first time in a decade.
The Albanian American Open Hand Association (AAOHA), located in Pelham Parkway, used to feed around 800 weekly before the pandemic. However, that value has since doubled to 1,600. And for the first time in 10 years, the pantry has had to turn people away.
Food pantry president Alexander Nilaj said, “It’s very heartbreaking. People line up at six or seven in the morning. We tell them: ‘Don’t wait, we have no food today.’”
However, despite the warning, many patrons still wait until anywhere between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., hoping for a “miracle.” That miracle came in the form of New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, who agreed to wire Nilaj $5,000.
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“Upon finding out that a Bronx food pantry no longer had food for the first time in a decade, I contributed, via my campaign, $5,000 to the food pantry’s sponsor,” Torres said. Nilaj believed it would be enough food to feed more than 1,200 last week, but for this week and subsequent weeks, he doesn’t know what the pantry will do.
“It’s very heartbreaking,” the 52-year-old said in a phone interview. “We always had food [before], maybe not enough, but we had always food. We feed everybody.”
The Bronx food pantry is a private-owned business, so it doesn’t receive state or city funding. It relies mostly on donations and help from local businesses, together with the 30 volunteers who help Nilaj distribute the food.
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They usually cater to families and single moms, as well as the sick and elderly population across the five boroughs. But in the last two weeks, Nilaj and his team have had to watch them “turn back and cry” when he told them there was no food.
Nilaj is hoping that more donations and funding will arrive. The Albanian first started to notice his shelves dwindling last year at Christmas time. It made him start turning hundreds away even as more people came in search of food.
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Many of the patrons were unemployed or were just in more need due to rising costs continuing to cut into the wallets of many. “It turned very tough,” Nilaj noted of the holiday season. “It’s hard.” He is now asking for more donations and hoping state and city governments can also pitch in to help him feed the mouths of hungry New Yorkers.
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