Of the 619,463 children under 18 in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, 7.8% lived with food insecurity in 2023. That is 48,318 hungry children, as estimated by Feeding America. That number has grown since then, with Island Harvest estimating the number now to be over 60,000. Now, with the cut in the SNAP food program, we will be facing an epidemic of hungry children.

Nassau County ranks 10th, and Suffolk County ranks 30th among the over 3,000 counties in the United States as the highest-income counties. With all that income in our area, we should be able to do better. We need to. Otherwise, we are condemning 8% of our population to a future without a future.