By Jeanmarie Evelly

The food pantry at Tolentine Zeiser Community Life Center, on University Avenue and Fordham Road, doesn’t open until 9 a.m. But the line of people who queue up at the building for the bags of groceries the center hands out starts to form some three hours earlier, around 6 a.m.

“The line has gotten longer,” said Sister Margaret McDermott, who runs the center. “A lot more working families need food now. It’s either your rent, or your food.”

At Christ Eternal Refuge Church, in Bedford Park, the weekly food pantry opens at 1 p.m. on Fridays. Sometimes, the line is so long that groceries will run out within 20 minutes, said Jose Rodriguez, the senior pastor there.

“It’s increasing, all the time increasing,” he said. “Right now we’re feeding over 200 people [a week].”

As the recession trudges on, food service programs in the Bronx and across the city continue to struggle with increasing demand, while contending with fewer government dollars and resources.

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which annually surveys the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens, found that 91 percent of the Bronx organizations that responded said they faced an increased demand for food this year; 70 percent said they were forced to ration food by limiting portion size, reducing hours of operation, or turning people away.

The survey also pointed to federal data indicating that one out of every six New York City residents is “food insecure,” or not always certain of where they will find their next meal. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, one of every four New York City children lives in a food insecure home, the survey said.

“Child and adult hunger levels are soaring, while our front line nonprofit feeding agencies are being starved out of business by government cuts,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the hunger coalition, in a statement. “How is it that our leaders in Washington find Wall Street firms ‘too big to fail,’ but lose little sleep allowing American children to go without food and allowing soup kitchens and food pantries to close?”

According to the coalition’s report, 47 feeding programs across the city closed their doors over the last few years, 12 of which were in the Bronx.

Despite these troubles, the city’s pantries and food kitchens are actually in slightly better shape than they were a few years ago. A boost in funding for them, and for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp program, came through stimulus funds approved in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Food stamp enrollment has soared in New York City over the last few years — nearly 1.8 million residents were receiving the benefits last year — and experts credit the program as vital to staving off hunger.

“We try to identify people — anyone who comes to our door who is not enrolled, we get them enrolled,” said Jack Marth, of the Webster Avenue nonprofit Part of the Solution. Marth said the number of people served by the organization’s food pantry program nearly doubled this year compared to last.

Last winter, Congress voted to cut some of the stimulus money intended for SNAP, and as part of the federal budget deal this year, the FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which funds kitchens and food pantries, saw its budget cut by 40 percent. According to the Coalition Against Hunger, that’s translated into a loss of $1.6 million for the city’s emergency feeding programs.

“It affects us. We can’t give the people as much food as we’d like to,” said Sister McDermott, of Tolentine Zeiser.

“But to be honest,” she said. “We’re grateful for anything.”