From his office in the corner of a Bedford-Stuyvesant soup kitchen’s dimly-lit cafeteria, Ed Fowler can see the growing lines at lunchtime. A free meal has long been part of the routine for poorer local residents, but Neighbors Together, the social service organization Fowler directs, has handed out more emergency food this year as the ranks of New York City’s jobless have swelled.

When Fowler shuts his heavy, windowless door and turns to administrative tasks, the sight is still not pretty. Donations and other revenue fell far enough to put Neighbors Together in the red this past summer for the first time since 2001, even as the 27-year-old group is serving more meals than ever.

New York City residents wait for doors to open at the city Human Resources Administration office in Williamsburg. Local applicants for food stamps must come the office to submit a finger image. Photo: Ryan Tracy

Yet those same applicants must still travel to an HRA office before receiving their grocery money, namely because New York City is one of a few places in the U.S. where food stamp applicants have to submit a digital finger image in order to be approved. The city’s requirement, in place since 1996, remains even though New York state dropped its finger imaging system in late 2007.

Anti-hunger advocates credited Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration for its efforts, including partnerships like the one with Neighbors Together, to expand access to food stamp benefits to more people than at any time since the mid-1990s. Still, even as Fowler and other anti-hunger advocates help the city expand its food stamp outreach, many are dumbfounded by the city’s stance on finger imaging, particularly as citywide unemployment has risen above 10 percent and pantries and soup kitchens have been catering to longer lines.

“The fact that we have titans of Wall Street making out like bandits and we are still fingerprinting people in New York City to receive food stamps is absurd,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, an advocacy group for emergency food organizations. Today New York City is one of four places in the U.S. where finger imaging is required to receive food stamps.

Though debate over finger imaging is not new, Berg and other advocates argued that recent stress on local emergency food programs has underscored the importance of quick access to federally-funded food benefits. If more at-risk people receive a monthly federal stipend to buy groceries, anti-hunger advocates say, soup kitchens and pantries can further stretch their resources.

“I don’t have to worry about a soup kitchen. You don’t have to be in a certain place at a certain time,” said Tom Vig, a 42-year-old former stadium concession worker, said when asked about his food stamps outside HRA’s office on Thornton Street in Williamsburg.

A survey conducted this past spring by the Food Bank for New York City found 90 percent of the city’s pantries and soup kitchens reported an increase in demand in 2008. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were already more than 11,000 households receiving food stamps as of 2007, emergency food providers said they had seen larger crowds.

“I don’t run out of food, but I find myself putting less in the bag,” said Olivia High, food program coordinator for Union Baptist Church on Decatur Street. Neighbors Together, according to Fowler, served more than 104,000 meals between July 2008 and June 2009 compared with about 90,000 during the previous one-year period.

Finger imaging was designed to reduce fraud and save money by preventing food stamp applicants from receiving benefits under more than one name. The practice was implemented in eight states by 1999, but it has fallen out of favor as some academic studies have concluded that it deters people from signing up for the program. Today, finger imaging remains a requirement in New York City, Texas, California, and Arizona.

In New York City, where about $253 million worth of benefits from the federal food stamp program reached nearly than 1.6 million people in September 2009 alone, even a small deterring effect could leave thousands of people without a monthly stipend for groceries purchased at local markets.

Those who make it their mission to feed New York City’s hungry, however, have not been able to draw on a grassroots push to remove the finger imaging requirement. In fact, many people who received food stamps said they understood why a finger image was necessary.

“There’s so many people that know so many schemes,” said Darryl Jones, 30, who worked counted inventory at various stores before joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Cinthia Garcia, 18, said she and her 2-year-old daughter needed food stamp benefits because her job with a company that transports disabled people does not pay well enough. “I don’t have nothing that would make me feel guilty about it,” Garcia said of the finger-imaging requirement as she waited to apply for food stamps at the HRA office near Broadway and Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg.

Another 18-year-old applicant, Jade Cruz, was surprised when told of the food stamp requirement, saying, “I don’t think that’s necessary, it’s not like we committed a crime or something.” Yet Cruz, who is unemployed, said she would submit an image of her finger if it meant receiving the “Electronic Benefit Card” that eligible applicants can use to buy food each month. Among households in New York City that received food stamps, the average monthly food stamp benefit was $293, according to the most recently available statistics from the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

While no study has specifically evaluated the costs and benefits of New York City’s finger imaging program, local anti-hunger advocates insisted that it had deterred applicants.

Fowler attributed the apathetic comments from some food stamp recipients to their experience with government welfare programs. People with that experience “are so used to being poked and prodded in the system that it’s like, ‘Oh whatever,’” Fowler said. “The difficulty is the other 40 percent of people eligible for food stamps who are not applying.”

“There are people who are working, where having the couple of hundred dollars they are eligible for under food stamps could really help their family,” Fowler said. “Those people are not going to waste their time going to a food stamp office to get fingerprinted. They may be affronted by that.”

Meanwhile, opponents of finger imaging said, the city catches relatively few cases of fraudulent food stamp applications. In 2006, the city used finger imaging to detect 31 cases of fraud, HRA Commissioner Robert Doar told a City Council committee the following year.

In City Council hearings this year, Doar continued to maintain that the finger-imaging requirement deters fraud and identifies people receiving double benefits even when it does not catch outright fraud. “Finger imaging is a simple process that saves valuable taxpayer dollars,” Doar told the City Council’s General Welfare Committee on Nov. 24. A spokeswoman for HRA referred questions for this story to the organization’s Web site.

Uphill battle

The recent push from city officials and anti-hunger advocates to increase access to food stamps comes partly in response to the policies of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose administration oversaw a significant drop in participation. During Giuliani’s tenure, between December 1994 and December 2001, participation in the program decreased from 1.45 million people to 798,000, a 45 percent reduction, according to a January 2008 report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. The office attributed the decline to improving economic conditions and policies that made food stamps harder to access.

Bloomberg has successfully reversed that trend at the urging of nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups and politicians. The city has extended hours at HRA offices to accommodate more food stamp applicants and rolled out additional locations where New Yorkers can submit applications for food stamps and Medicaid, including Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Neighbors Together. The city also sent Medicaid recipients a letter this year informing them that they might also be eligible for food stamps, a more proactive step than might have been expected in the past.

Advocates say this progress, while noteworthy, leaves room for improvement.

Even after the city’s recent increase in participation, 26 states exceeded New York state’s participation rate in the federal food stamp program, which is known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in 2007, according to the most recently available statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program. The USDA estimated the participation rate among New York state residents eligible for food stamps was between 59 and 64 percent – below the national average, which was estimated to be between 65 percent and 67 percent.

“There are more people on food stamps now in New York City than there were before,” said William Ayers, executive director of New York City-based nonprofit group WHY Hunger. “But when you consider the new amount of poor people. We haven’t caught up with the food demand.”