On June 30, 2021, the City Council and Mayor de Blasio reached a deal on the Recovery Budget, a $98.7 billion dollar budget for New York City’s Fiscal Year 2022. The largest budget in NYC history, the FY22 Adopted Budget includes $14 billion dollars in federal aid from federal stimulus packages passed over the last year. Major initiatives in the budget include a $1 Billion rainy day fund, free universal 3-K for all New York City three-year-olds, $600 Million for more than 1,000 schools to accomplish Fair Student Funding, and an additional $200 Million for the NYPD despite renewed calls from advocates in the Budget Justice Movement to reinvest funds from the agency towards human service organizations.

In addition to historic investments made by the administration, City Council Discretionary Funds were returned to pre-pandemic 2020 funding levels after receiving a drastic cut in FY21.These funds offer much-needed support to nonprofits providing critical services to communities hardest hit by the economic and health crisis created by COVID. (We highly recommend you search Schedule C for your organization’s name if you applied for discretionary dollars to see if you were awarded any funds!) The budget reversed cuts made to libraries, parks and cultural institutions that were made during the peak of the pandemic.

Food Systems Initiatives Funded in the New York City FY22 Adopted Budget

We were incredibly pleased to see that over $280 Million was invested in initiatives that will help support food system recovery and address the ongoing hunger crisis. Included in the final budget were the following priorities that Equity Advocates and the members of the NY COVID-19 Food Coalition that we convene advocated for, including:

$27 Million for the Pandemic Emergency Food Reserve Program (P-FRED) to expand emergency food distribution including fresh produce and shelf stable goods to pantries. These funds originated from the US Treasury COVID Fund. There is the potential for an additional $12.5M to be added to P-FRED this fall.
$24M one time citywide investment through HRA for a 1% bonus for Human Service Contractors, significantly less than the $120 Million requested by City Council to help support nonprofits severely impacted by the COVID pandemic.
$23.8 Million for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP), a $3.6M increase from FY21 levels.
$12.5 Million from City Council for food pantries outside of the EFAP network, a $6.81 Million increase over FY21 levels.
$167 million for 75,000 slots for the Summer Youth Employment Program. In the final adopted budget $12.3 million was included for 5,000 additional CUNY Summer Youth Employment slots. This on top of the restoration of SYEP funds and 70,000 slots in the Preliminary Budget.
$7 Million to restore and increase organics/compost drop off sites, a much smaller investment than the $32.6M that the NY COVID-19 Food Coalition advocated for to fully fund the NYC Composting program.
$6.8 Million for the new Eat Well Eat Local Pilot Program overseen by the Mayors’ Office of Food Policy (located in the Department of Environmental Protection budget). This pilot program will serve the approximately 30,000 Get Food participants still enrolled in the program by offering them monthly subsidies to order groceries online.
$3.9 Million for 7 staff members in the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy. These funds originated from Federal funds.
$2.134 million for the Access to Healthy Food and Nutritional Education Council initiative, which funds farmers markets, urban farms, community gardens, and programs to expand the use of SNAP benefits.
$3.8M for the SBS Worker Cooperative Fund Council initiative
$2.1M for CUNY Health and Food Access & Benefits, which funds nutrition education and student pantries.
$1.5M for the Food Access and Benefits Council Initiative (HRA)
$250,000 for the Food Ed Hub, housed in the Tisch Food Center

For a deeper dive into the numbers, we developed a comprehensive spreadsheet with these investments and how they stack up to funding included in the FY21 NYC Council Budget and subsequent budgets.

We were disappointed that the Administration did not make investments to fund Home Delivered Meals for Home Bound Adults through the Department for the Aging or expand SNAP and WIC benefits outreach and enrollment at HRA, despite City Council’s $37 million request for the initiative and calls from advocates within our coalition. In addition, the Administration and City Council failed to fund either the Food Justice Fund Pilot Program through the Mayor's Office of Food Policy called for by our Coalition or additional School Food Managers at the Office of Food and Nutrition Services within the Department of Education.

Looking ahead, we are eager to work with the incoming 2022 Mayoral Administration, Borough Presidents and new City Council to ensure that the investments announced in this budget result in an equitable recovery and promote the well-being of New York City’s estimated 1.5 Million hungry families.