Bureaucratic Bungle Sows Post-Sandy Conflict for Food Charities

Missteps by New York’s Parks Department have planted “seeds of distrust” between two small charities that both stepped up to feed victims of Hurricane Sandy in the city’s storm-battered Rockaway Park neighborhood, Al Jazeera America writes.

Shore Soup, which formed in the wake of the October 2012 storm, and the older Culinary Kids both focused on bringing organic, home-cooked food to displaced and needy residents. After Shore Soup attracted significant attention from foundations and the media for its efforts, the parks department allocated it space in a city-owned community garden that was already occupied by Culinary Kids.

Although the department acknowledged the error earlier this month and said it would try to accommodate all users of the garden, the confusion has bred rumors and conflict between the two grass-roots groups that Al Jazeera says mirrors the larger questions that have plagued allocation of post-disaster resources.