NEW YORK (April 6, 2022) -- As leaders in Albany continue to work on a broader New York State budget agreement, staffers from the Coalition of Asian American Children and Families (CACF) and our partners at the Center for the Integration and Advancement of New Americans (CIANA), the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), and the Korean-American Family Service Center (KAFSC) headed to the Capitol Monday to make a final push for the AAPI Equity Budget, a historic investment that would significantly bolster New York State’s growing AAPI community.

With this holistic $64.5 investment through the AAPI Equity Budget, New York State will be setting an example across the nation on the importance of addressing the long underfunded needs within the AAPI community. Our diverse coalition has continued to demonstrate widespread support through sign-on letters of both the AAPI community and allies, social media campaigns, and presence in Albany.

“The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) has been working with our partners and allies to continue our calls for the State to fully fund the AAPI Equity Budget at $64.5 million. Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian violence have left a devastating impact on the AAPI community by exacerbating systemic inequities that were facing our communities even prior to the pandemic. This AAPI Equity Budget will be the most significant action to date in the US to address the horrific surge in anti-AAPI violence, the disproportionate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the historic under-resourcing of the AAPI community,” said CACF’s Co-Executive Directors Anita Gundanna and Vanessa Leung.

The Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community includes the East, Southeast, South, Central Asian, and Indo-Caribbean diasporic populations of New York, as well as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations of New York. AAPI New Yorkers comprise 11% of the State’s total population and are the fastest growing racial/ethnic group and voting population in New York City, State, and the nation. Our unified coalition believes that anti-Asian racism is a concern of ALL communities, and we believe the only solutions to the complex challenges we are facing today will involve sustained solidarity and a commitment to investing in communities of color, which must be led by our State leadership — the Governor, the State Senate and the State Assembly.

These past two years have demonstrated the vital role that language accessible, culturally responsive community based organizations have played to create safe communities - communities where people feel connected and supported. Community based organizations have addressed issues of racism, gender based violence, food insecurity, economic insecurity, and health access.

Here’s how the AAPI Equity Budget would address the most pressing issues facing our community.

VIOLENCE TOWARDS AAPI COMMUNITIES

The AAPI community continues to face a rise in experiences of violence due to anti-AAPI hate. With the help of this pioneering budget, more than 50 AAPI community based organizations across New York State will be resourced and equipped to provide culturally responsive and language accessible services that are vital to understanding the growing needs of AAPIs during this challenging time. “During an extraordinarily challenging year marked by a spike in anti-Asian racism and violence, KAFSC has responded to a 300% increase in calls to our 24-hour bilingual hotline. We continue to see a concerning growth in the number of gender-based and domestic violence in the most vulnerable community and community members,” said Jeehae Fischer, the Executive Director of the Korean American Family Service Center (KAFSC). “This financial commitment demonstrates the equitable representation of the diverse AAPI community and supports immigrant-led and -serving organizations that provide critical support to AAPI survivors and their children during this painful time.”

Community fear about potential violent attacks has also led many women and elders to drastically change their behavior, our Members and Partners report. “Henry Street Settlement serves AAPI community members across the age spectrum in all of our programs, from preschool and workforce development to mental health care and senior services. The needs of this diverse community—which experiences the highest rate of poverty in New York City—have only grown during the pandemic. The exponential increase in racist violence against this community during the pandemic led us to change the hours of our senior center, serving dinner during daylight hours because our members are afraid to walk outside at night," said David Garza, President and CEO of Henry Street Settlement. "The AAPI Equity Budget would go a long way to serve this long neglected community that contributes so much economically and culturally to New York City.”

Discover more about how the AAPI Equity Budget is essential to creating a safer city here.

FOOD INSECURITY

Food insecurity also remains a hidden yet persistent problem for families across the state in our community. A new report by the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) in partnership with CACF and the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) found that accessing food was the number one concern of the Asian Americans surveyed. “Our community members are going to extreme measures in order to feed their families, including changing their food habits, rationing or skipping meals and relying on food pantries and food banks and community based organizations to put food on their tables.” said Gundanna and Leung of CACF.

But while New York’s community-based organizations have stepped in to help residents feed their families during these unprecedented times, CBOs that serve the AAPI community remain startlingly underfunded.

“We firmly believe one of the best ways to make our communities and city safer is through building bridges between diverse groups and striving for unity across cultures,” said Jennifer Sun, the Co-Executive Director of Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE). “Passage of the Equity Budget would not only provide continued funding for AAFE’s East Harlem pantry and culturally appropriate food initiatives, but it would also create a strong foundation for meaningful engagement and collaboration between East Harlem’s rapidly expanding Asian community and other groups in one of New York City’s most dynamic neighborhoods.”

The need for food and social services is particularly stark amongst our AAPI elders, our Members and Partners report. Yet addressing food security requires a nuanced, culturally responsive approach that factors in issues such as familiarity of ingredients and adherence to religious and cultural standards, especially when it comes to serving AAPI clients. “Food insecurity is a critical problem for our communities. We started our culturally palatable food pantry in 2016, after one of our clients, a South Asian undocumented immigrant and cancer patient, shared that she could not find the food that she ate at any of the local food pantries. She said, 'All I want is some dal (lentils), rice, atta (whole wheat flour) and some spices and I can cook my own food,’” said Sudha Acharya, Executive Director, South Asian Council for Social Services. “The pandemic has only aggravated the need for food, here at our pantry each week we serve over 5,600 individuals. Providing food that is culturally appropriate is expensive as we have to purchase them from local suppliers. The passage of the $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget Proposal (FY 22-23) will ensure that we are able to keep pace with the growing number of clients that we serve.”

Head here to learn more about how our partners are working to address this pressing issue.

COVID RELIEF

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, our community-based organizations have been on the front lines of this public health crisis by providing New York’s most vulnerable residents with PPE, updated guidance on COVID prevention and treatment in their native languages and assistance with navigating our bureaucratic healthcare system. “Despite the fact that our CBOs were playing a critical role in keeping New Yorkers healthy, the level of support and funding they have received from the State continues to lag behind. As our community continues to recover from the pandemic, the health needs of AAPI New Yorkers must be centered with a concrete commitment to provide the community with vaccine access and in-language support.” said Gundanna and Leung of CACF.

During the pandemic, AAPI stories were also being erased by the lack of granular data on race and ethnicity in New York. At the start of the pandemic, the AAPI community struggled to receive targeted COVID relief and resources as a result of an overwhelming narrative in the media that AAPI communities fared better through their compliance and willingness to follow guidelines compared to other communities of color. However, as we’ve seen through community studies and anecdotal evidence, this was not the full picture. A 2021 NYU CSAAH report found that Chinese Americans had the highest COVID mortality rate of all patients in New York City, dying at a 44 percent higher rate than white patients. The pandemic also disproportionately affected New York City’s South Asian community, who had the second highest positivity and hospitalization rates in New York City public hospitals. As a whole, Asian Americans were two times more likely to test positive for COVID compared to white patients, yet less likely to get tested at all due to a lack of access to COVID testing for AAPI New Yorkers.

Read more about how the AAPI Equity Budget would support our partners working to keep our most vulnerable community members healthy here.

The fact that so many of our Members and Partners provide in-language services and support has proved to be critical over the last two years. “We are representative of our client base; our staff speaks 36 languages, enabling us to serve populations that mainstream providers are largely unable to effectively reach. The NY State Legislature passing the $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget Proposal (FY 22-23) would allow the Arab-American Family Support Center (AAFSC) to address the rising and unprecedented needs of immigrant communities,” said Salma Mohamed, Partnership & Capacity-Building Specialist at the Arab-American Family Support Center, who adds that AAFSC provided wraparound support to 10,000 clients in 2021.

The pandemic also served to magnify existing gaps in the AAPI community when it came to accessing healthcare, insurance and mental health support. “Our holistic services also include addressing some of the hidden ramifications of the pandemic, particularly for immigrant communities, through case management for domestic violence survivors (including those with little to no English proficiency), food security projects, youth empowerment, adult education classes, mental health counseling, etc. We look forward to scaling those efforts,” Mohamed continued. “The $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget Proposal (FY22-23) would enable us, and community-based organizations like us, to continue our work addressing systemic inequities that have only worsened since the onset of the pandemic, from enhancing vaccine access to supporting domestic violence survivors through culturally responsive and linguistically competent means.”