1 In 8 Go Hungry In Hamden

As paintings of famine-stricken mid-19th century Irishmen stared from the walls, politicians, hunger advocates, and community members gathered Thursday morning to deliver a message: hunger is not a distant problem but rather a harsh reality for many Hamden residents.

At the event, which took place at the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, representatives of United Way of Greater New Haven (UWGNH) and other collaborators presented the results of a new report on hunger in the town.

“Facts & Faces: Food Hardship in Hamden” is the culmination of over a year of research by the Hamden Food Security Task Force, which includes contributors from UWGNH, the Town of Hamden and Hamden Public Schools, local universities, and community organizations.

The report found that 12 percent of Hamden residents, or one in eight, experienced food insecurity in the last year, and that 39 percent of families struggle to put food on the table. It found that food insecurity varies widely among different demographic groups. Some 14 percent of women experience it, while only 9 percent of men do. Nineteen percent of black and Hispanic/Latinx Hamden residents are food insecure while only 8 percent of white residents are. Of those with up to a high school diploma: 18 percent. Among those with at least a bachelor’s degree: 4 percent.

Hamden Mayor Curt Leng was the first politician to speak at the event.

“As the mayor of this beautifully diverse town, I take it personally that children here are going hungry,” he told the 60-odd attendees. He said that when his son asks him why people in Hamden are hungry, he wants to be able to say that ​“our community and our leaders took a stand to say we’re not going to have that in our community.”

The task force has already begun a number of programs in Hamden in the past year. It established a monthly mobile food pantry in partnership with the Connecticut Food Bank and added three summer supper meal sites and two backpack programs, which send kids home with backpacks of food.

“Hunger is not a far off problem,” said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. ​“It’s not limited to the most rural or urban enclaves in our country. Hunger is here in Hamden, Conneciticut. In the Third Congressional District — 25 towns that I represent — one of seven people do not know where their next meal is coming from. In the state of Conneciticut, statistically the richest state in the nation.”

She said that wage inequality ​“is not the result of technology or globalization but rather the public policy choices that we make and what we are investing in in our country.”

In Washington, she also fights for food assistance programs, she said, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food stamps. In his 2020 budget, President Trump proposed cutting SNAP by $220 billion over the next ten years. DeLauro said that she is working to stop cuts like that.

“Every time I turn around they’re cutting our benefits,” New Havener Kim Hart, who volunteers with Witnesses to Hunger and receives SNAP benefits herself, told the Independent. ​“If they’re going to stop cutting our food stamp every time I turn around, we have to change the law.”

“We Have A Voice”

Kathleen O’Connor Duffany of the Yale School of Public Health presented the report’s findings.

Then Deborah Clark got up to speak. Clark said that she goes to pantries at least four times a month, and that she also receives SNAP benefits. She came to Hamden in 1996. She is 55, the youngest of 15 siblings.

“I didn’t plan to be standing here telling you that I’m homeless, sleep in a truck, and I’m hungry,” she said. ​“I was always the person that came to the pantries and helped the elderly and cooked for the elderly and brought them food.”

She said that she loves the pantries, including the monthly one held at the Keefe Community Center, but that ​“it’s hard for me because I don’t have a can opener in the truck. I don’t have a microwave in the truck.”

Though the pantries provide a great service, she said, it still is not enough. ​“I’m letting you know that there are people out here like me that is hungry with the pantries because it’s so many of us, that sometimes it’s just not enough.”

She said that she gets her vegetables from the pantries, but that they’re usually canned. She would like to see more fresh vegetables, she said.

After a brief video from U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who could not be there in person, Witnesses to Hunger members at each table facilitated smaller discussions on hunger, using three general questions to start.

Hart, who facilitated at one table, asked how many people in the U.S. struggle with food insecurity. After a few members at the table guessed, she told them.

“Forty-nine million people struggle to put food on the table. and that shouldn’t be so in this land of milk and honey,” she said.

After a few minutes of lively discussion, UWGNH President and CEO Jennifer Heath had someone from each table stand and say something about what their table had discussed.

Doretha, or ​“D,” Jackson stood to represent Hart’s table.

“We have a voice,” she said. ​“We want our voice to be heard for hunger… [and] for everyone because my name is D Jackson and I stand.”

Though Jackson and Hart had not met before, they agreed that it’s essential to get the voices of people who experience hunger out more.

“If you can put a face to that one in seven that goes hungry every night, I think that’s more impactful,” said Hart.

She said it took her a while to find her voice, but that eventually she did. She realized that sitting around her table and talking to a few friends was not going to make change.

“It took me just being so broken, so fed up, so tired, until I said there has to be another way.” She started going to Mothers and Others for Justice, and then began to speak out about hunger, testifying in front of lawmakers in Hartford.

Hart said that she was homeless for two years and five months. She said that it takes courage to get up and tell such personal stories in a room full of lawmakers, but that ​“once I found my voice, once I found out that people can really listen to me, that’s all it took. Now I can’t shut up.”

She now volunteers for multiple organizations and tries to speak out as much as possible and air the voices of others with similar experiences. Her goal is to make political change.

“We know that in order to effect change, you have to affect policy.”