At Make the Road New York, a community organization, about 600 people still collect food each week at their Jackson Heights location, organizers said, more than double the number of people served before the pandemic.
The interlocking neighborhoods — Corona, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst and Woodside — are home to a high concentration of undocumented people who have been ineligible for government aid such as stimulus checks and unemployment insurance.
Many qualify for some newly created benefits, such as a state rent relief program and the Excluded Workers Fund — a $2.1 billion fund to give one-time cash payments to undocumented people who lost work. But the money from that fund is not yet available; state officials are still ironing out the distribution process.