Snow used to mean joy, now it just means hunger. Summer used to mean fun, now it just means suffering. For Brooklyn, a borough that’s already plagued with food insecurity, the plague is only metastasizing with climatic change. Although policies have been formulated and programs have been implemented, but are these programs immune to climate change?
When heavy snow falls and the flash floods hit Brooklyn, our community fridges are empty and the food stands vanish into thin air. As a Brooklynite, I’ve watched elderly neighbors cut around moldy produce because they must make tradeoffs between food and insulin, or groceries and medication. Fortunately, there are programs like Produce (Rx) offered by NYC Health + Hospitals that “prescribe” fresh produce to patients whose health is exacerbated by poor nutrition, a term which the World Food Program describes as a “triple burden,” when disease, malnutrition and poverty collide and reinforce each other. But what patient would fight for a crowded bus during a storm just to find the food aid center closed because the volunteers didn’t show up?
In 2024, the heat was so strong that both the Health Bucks and Get the Good Stuff coupons, programs designed by NYC Department of Health to help low-income New Yorkers eat more vegetables, couldn’t keep up. The good stuff wasn’t good anymore. And what good are the Double Up coupons, a program that gets SNAP beneficiaries twice the fruit, if all the produce is wilted? What good is the program if all “the twice as much” fruits you got are oozing off young larvae from the insects and pests?
When the rain came, it didn’t bring any relief. The storm only brought mayhem in that following spring, I remember vividly as it was just yesterday. In 2018, I had to walk ten train stations to pick up the Grow NYC Fresh food box because a huge storm halted one of the world’s oldest subway systems. I did not have to use a stroller or walker to get there, but what about a mother with a baby or children? What of the 85-year-old woman who still must eat come rain or shine?
These programs are lifelines to the 400,000 Brooklyn residents who are reportedly food insecure. But they are stretched thin, and they wither when the weather breaks. Public health experts should take a page or two from programs like Groceries to Go and City Harvest Mobile Markets that do home deliveries to participants. Another intervention is to replace picking up with provision with checks and gifts cards, making food accessibility possible.
One would argue that resources are limited so the system thrives on volunteers. It does, but what happens when the trains and buses are halted by snowstorms and flash floods? Surely the volunteers aren’t expected to pay for a cab to get to the soup kitchen. And even when they can’t make it, someone still needs to be at the food pantry because hunger doesn’t take snow days nor does it take a raincheck. Skeptics also point to program misuse if parents are allowed to get groceries at school without having to drag their kids in wet rains and snowstorms. We can solve this by finding a better identification system, like asking parents to bring proof of school enrolment and birth certificates.
I have lived in the chasm between policy and reality, and I have felt the effect of hunger in the wealthiest city in the world. With climate change widening the gap even more, we can stitch the gap with real time surveys to get feedback from ground zero and evaluate policies. With data and funds at hand, we must redesign food aid programs to be all weather, because food access should never be weather permitting to begin with.
Let’s rebuild Brooklyn where snow means joy and summer means fun again. People should not have to choose between moldy vegetables and an empty stomach, and the borough can provide food that is truly good, available, accessible and affordable to all.
Wingila Bonilla is a nursing and MPH student at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.
