Joel Berg Quotations

When every fifth child in New York City lives in a home that doesn't have enough food, it is clear that New York City is facing a hunger crisis. You could fill Yankee Stadium more than seven times with these children. Such numbers should be a wakeup call for government leaders, business executives and average residents alike.

She has proposed a number of items that have been at the top of our advocacy agenda for years. In particular, we are thrilled by her proposal to create a small new Office on Hunger and Nutrition that will break through bureaucratic hurdles to better coordinate food programs across City agency lines.

Mr. Mayor, precisely because city anti-hunger programs are so inadequate, large numbers of New Yorkers, including an appalling number of children, do go hungry.

It is clear that food insecurity is an unfortunate reality among children, senior citizens and adults in all five boroughs. It is also clear that it is a very solvable problem.

The good news is that, if the city did a better job of enabling eligible people to obtain federal food stamp benefits, the city could easily receive that much additional federal funding, thereby eliminating the vast majority of the city's hunger problem.

This obviously shows a fair amount of disarray. They really went from bad to worse, from taking an ongoing bad policy decision and making us think they were going to do the right thing, then pulling the rug out from under a whole lot of hungry people.