women putting bagged food into a box

Queens, one of the first COVID-19 epicenters, faces a new crisis: hunger

In one of New York’s most diverse communities, food banks struggle to meet the growing demand from immigrant families out of work.

Volunteers at CENTI, a church-run food pantry in Queens, create an assembly line to process food as delivery trucks arrive. The grocery bags are then passed out for free to those in need. By the end of 2020, more than 50 million Americans could experience food insecurity, according to Feeding America, the country’s largest hunger-relief organization.
Photograph by Natalie Keyssar, National Geographic
Read this story in Spanish

It’s just a handful of New York City neighborhoods—some 10 square miles in the northern part of Queens—but it serves the cuisines of the world. On Sunday morning in a Corona neighborhood plaza, an outdoor mass in Spanish draws churro carts and juice vendors offering their wares to parishioners passing by. In Jackson Heights—the most culturally diverse place in the world, where an estimated 167 languages are spoken—crowded thoroughfares are lined with eateries and grocery stores from around the globe: Colombian bakeries and Nepalese noodle shops, Bangladeshi bazaars and Afghan cafés.

Yet for many people who live here, food hardship—a lack of reliable access to enough affordable and nutritious food—is a chronic concern that’s only worsened during the pandemic.

In November 2019,

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