Poverty on Long Island

A companion blog to Audra Kincaid's Nassau News story
Tue Dec 18

Broll of a single family food bag from the Freeport food pantry for Nassau News Story.

Some B-roll film of the Freeport food pantry freezers for Nassau News Story

Interview with Barbara Harrison for Nassau News Story

Full interview with Rev. Thomas Goodhue for Nassau News Story

Serving the poor is central to the faith. Richard Koubek, Catholic Charities public policy administrator and point-person for MICA

I’ve never known hunger but, looking back on it, I have been right up on its edge. Smearing ketchup on a couple slices of bread tasted good back then, was resourceful and, in a way, artful. Frying up bologna and sliding it between two slices of that bleached flour of a product was, too, and I now know that that kind of eating on the cheap definitely ruins the arteries. But it’s what you do to get by.

Not forgetting that portion of my story makes me take notice when the largest food bank in New York City sends an alarmist, if inaccurate, e-mail alert about its empty larder. (In times of trouble, embellishments by the marketing staff can be forgiven.) Remembering how I came upon my ritualized contemplations of food makes me listen up when a project such as MICAH starts making noise.

Katti Gray Newsday columnist

Reform of poverty line

John E. Schwarz. a senior fellow at Demos, a national public policy organization in Manhattan, and the author of “Freedom Reclaimed,” calls for reform in of the national poverty line. 

Poverty Levels

In 1994 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology ran an article by Leonard Gaines and Pearl M. Kamer that detailed how the system for judging the poverty level on long island needed to be adjusted.