“Sometimes people will come in a Mercedes,’’ said Gina Davio, program director of social services at Fisherman’s Mark, a nonprofit social services center in Lambertville, a city of 3,900 on the Delaware River. “Sometimes they come in nothing but Ralph Lauren, but you never know: That may be all they have left.’’
Nationwide, requests for food assistance rose during the past year in 25 of 29 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors. Unemployment was the primary reason for requesting aid, followed by poverty, low-wage jobs, and high housing costs, according to a recent survey. Eighty-eight percent of the cities reported an increase in the number of people requesting food assistance for the first time.
In Hunterdon County, the number of households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the $75 billion federal system widely known as food stamps, increased to 1,424 in 2010 from 232 in 2007.
Neighboring Somerset County, where the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis hunted foxes on horseback and the Far Hills steeplechase is a highlight of the social season, increased its caseload, to 3,777, from 1,237.
That county, a 45-minute drive from the Lincoln Tunnel to midtown Manhattan, has the eighth-highest household income, at $94,270.
Morris County, 10th in the national income rankings and home to Governor Chris Christie, more than doubled its food stamp enrollment to 4,076 cases from 1,680.
Christie said he had not personally seen evidence of hunger in Morris County.
