City Steps Up Food Access Efforts

The city has partnered with one local church to deliver over 1,500 bags of food to hungry seniors.

It has partnered with another to deliver more than 1,100 prepared meals to the elderly who can no longer visit the city’s shuttered senior centers.

And it has now launched a new webpage, interactive map, and comprehensive food resource list for New Haveners to turn to if they’re struggling to put dinner on the table during the Covid-19 public health and economic crises.

City Food Systems Policy Director Latha Swamy and Transportation, Traffic & Parking (TTP) Deputy Director Karla Lindquist provided those updates Wednesday afternoon during Mayor Justin Elicker’s daily virtual coronavirus-related press briefing, held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on YouTube Live.

Elicker said that the city currently has 1,253 confirmed positive Covid-19 cases and 42 confirmed related fatalities.

Swamy and Lindquist joined the mayor and other top city officials to present on the myriad efforts that City Hall in collaboration with a host of community soup kitchens, food pantries, churches, and food access advocates and nonprofits have undertaken to make sure that city residents stay fed at a time when many have lost their jobs and many more are confined to their homes because of statewide social distancing mandates.

“In normal times, this is always a challenge,” Elicker said about young, elderly, and low-income New Haveners in particular not having adequate access to food. ​“This situation with Covid-19 has exacerbated that situation.”

Touching on many of the local food access efforts discussed at a recent city Food Policy Council meeting, Swamy reported that the public schools continue to distribute two days’ worth of free breakfast and lunch at 38 different sites throughout the city every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The city’s Elderly Services department is working with community partners on a mobile food pantry that delivers groceries to people 55 years and older and prepared meals to those 60 and up. And the city recently reopened police substations in Dixwell, Fair Haven, the Hill, and Dwight so that the soup kitchens that typically operate out of those sites can continue their work there.

“Those substations are now approved for operating their food pantries,” she said.

Swamy (pictured) added that the city has collaborated with the Coordinated Food Access Network (CFAN) on organizing delivery of food pantry items directly to people’s homes, particularly for high-risk individuals and the elderly.

She said that that food pantry delivery series happens on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in collaboration with the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK), Loaves and Fishes, and the Keefe Center in Hamden.

“This delivery program has only been operating for about four weeks,” Swamy said. Since they started, they’ve had 64 volunteers sign up to drive and deliver food to families. And they’ve delivered over 1,000 bags of food to 784 homes.

Lindquist (pictured) said that Elderly Services, in collaboration with Vertical Church, has made 850 mobile pantry deliveries and dropped off 1,500 bags of food to hungry seniors. And in collaboration with Life Branch church, the city has delivered more than 1,100 prepared meals to the elderly.

Looking forward, Swamy said, the city and local food access advocates are pushing for the federal government to allow Connecticut to benefit from a ​“fast track implementation of online purchasing” for food stamp users. She said that online purchasing for those with SNAP benefits is only available in roughly 10 states nationwide.

She said the city is currently working with local restaurants to provide free meals to homeless individuals who have been decompressed from shelters to hotel rooms amidst the crisis, and that the city is looking to set up a more formal structure of rotating restaurant participants for that food service need.

And she pointed to a newly launched city webpage with an interactive map of nearby soup kitchens, food pantries, and other food access points, as well as a list that will be updated on a regular basis.

Click here to go to that website.

Other updates included:

• Elicker (pictured) said that Fair Haven Community Health Care’s new testing site on Grand Avenue and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center’s new testing site on Dixwell Avenue were both ​“swamped with requests” for testing Wednesday, their first day open at their respective locations. Both sites have a capacity for conducting roughly 20 to 30 tests a day, he said, and have scheduled patients to be seen every 15 minutes or so. He said the anticipated turnaround time for results is two to three days.

“The most important thing for us to beat the virus is to test a lot of people on a regular basis and pair that with contact tracing,” voluntary quarantine, and voluntary isolation, he said. As long as there is no vaccine for the virus, those are the most effective public health strategies to ensure that the city’s economic and social life can resume without risking another outbreak.

Elicker said the city is still in negotiations with Greenwich-based doctor, Steven Murphy, to open up a third walk-up coronavirus testing site in another pedestrian-friendly, majority-minority neighborhood in New Haven.

• City Health Director Maritza Bond (pictured) said that Yale New Haven Hospital’s Grimes Center currently has 18 employees and 58 residents who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Three of those residents are hospitalized, and one person has died from the virus. At Fair Haven’s Mary Wade Home, 15 residents have tested positive, with 14 currently in the hospital and one untimely death. At Mary Wade’s Skilled Nursing Center, there are 25 positive cases among residents, five hospitalizations, six untimely deaths, and 19 positive employees. And at RegalCare in Fair Haven Heights, a total of 21 residents have tested positive, 11 of whom are hospitalized, while 9 staff have tested positive.

• Asked about news that Yale University is receiving $7 million in aid from the federal government through the CARES Act, Elicker said, ​“I do think that now is the time when those that are struggling the most need the most support. … This is a time to invest in those people that are struggling the most.” Harvard University recently announced that it would not be accepting the roughly $9 million it was slated to receive through the CARES Act.

• They mayor was also asked about the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and how the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced his thoughts on government preparedness and responsibilities around climate change. He said that the current public health crisis has reminded him ​“just how important it is to work together,” and how serious the consequences are when government — and society more broadly — is not prepared for an all-encompassing disaster.

On both climate change and the novel coronavirus, he said the national government has responded by not taking the issues seriously, by disseminating conflicting and confusing messages, and by not adequately preparing considering the seriousness of the issues.

“Local governments have taken on many responsibilities with the lack of leadership at the national level,” he said. ​“We’re stepping up to try to support the surrounding community in these times of crisis.”

If the national government continues to not take the coronavirus or climate change as seriously as it should, he said, local governments will have to continue to step up and collaborate to both prepare for future disasters and mitigate damage already done.

Click here to read a proclamation signed by the mayor Wednesday to commemorate Earth Day.