Food bank use in the city’s inner suburbs — Scarborough, North York, York and Etobicoke — has spiked 45 per cent since the 2008 recession with a corresponding 16 per cent drop in the old city of Toronto, according to the Daily Bread Food Bank’s annual Who’s Hungry report.
Spiralling rents and Toronto’s downtown condo boom are pushing the poor — and many food banks themselves — into the suburbs where transit and social services are sparse, says the report subtitled “A tale of two cities,” being released Monday.
“The surprise for me was actually seeing the numbers,” says Daily Bread executive director Gail Nyberg. “There are services downtown. There is an infrastructure. But the further you get from downtown, the less there is.”
During the same period, the average length of time food bank users relied on the service doubled from 12 months to two years. This suggests people are having a harder time climbing out of poverty, says the report based on interviews with 1,000 people who used the system in 2014.
Despite a slight decrease in overall use in 2013, food bank visits are up again slightly with almost 897,000 visits last year, or a 12-per-cent rise since the recession.
The first thing Ashley-Victoria Martineau does when her disability welfare cheque arrives at the end of the month is go grocery shopping.
“You just get so hungry,” says the Scarborough woman who suffers from depression and developmental issues. “You are starving because you might not receive enough nutrients from the food from the food bank.”
During last month’s shopping trip, Martineau and her partner, who is also disabled, spent $460 on groceries — almost half of the $1,016 they have left after paying rent.
But the groceries typically last only a couple of weeks. And by then, the couple has spent the rest of their money on transit passes, cellphones and laundry.
“We tried to survive without the food bank, but with grocery prices going up over the years and the government adding HST to many items, it’s becoming more of a struggle,” says Martineau, 26, who has been relying on the food bank at the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities for several years. “Our disability cheque isn’t keeping up.”
People on social assistance have always made up the bulk of food bank users, according to the Daily Bread’s report. But last year, for the first time, those receiving Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) payments outstripped general welfare recipients by income source.
They represent 34 per cent of food bank users, up from 28 per cent in 2013. About 31 per cent rely on general welfare, or Ontario Works.
As the economy shifts from full-time to more part-time and casual work, private disability insurance and federal Employment Insurance programs have become more difficult to access, the report notes. Provincial social assistance — a program of last resort — is often the only option when people lose their jobs or become disabled.
“If people are receiving social assistance in Toronto, it is almost guaranteed they will need the help of a food bank at some point,” the report says.
Alex Coneybeare walks 40 minutes to the Daily Bread Food Bank in Etobicoke four times a month to pick up his groceries.
“I don’t want to waste money on transit if I don’t have to,” he says.
Most of Coneybeare’s monthly Ontario Works cheque of $656, goes to pay rent for his one-bedroom apartment.
Although his welfare worker allows his parents to help him with the rent, it is still a challenge to survive on less than $300 a month without the food bank.
Coneybeare, 28, worked a string of fast food, retail and manual labour jobs until about two years ago when a seasonal position ended and the work “dried up.”
“It’s really tough out there,” he says.
Hunger is a symptom of poverty, says Nyberg. But neither hunger nor poverty have received much attention during the current federal election campaign.
“Hunger doesn’t happen in isolation,” she says. “The reason people are hungry is that they are poor and they don’t have enough money to buy their own food or they don’t have enough money to pay their rent and buy their own food.”
Ontario and most other provinces have poverty reduction strategies. Toronto is expected to approve a municipal plan this fall. But Ottawa has been “missing in action,” Nyberg says.
“So far we have no federal strategy and nothing in any of the major party platforms talks about this,” she says. “The candidates need to hear about this from us when they knock on our doors.”
- Toronto food bank use by the numbers
- 25 Percentage who have been in Canada less than four years (down from 40 per cent in 2008.)
- 48 Average number of months a person uses a food bank (up from 24 months in 2008.)
- 65 Percentage who rely on social assistance as their main source of income.
- 34 Percentage who rely on the Ontario Disability Support Plan.
- 31 Percentage who rely on general welfare assistance, or Ontario Works.
- 37 Percentage who have a college diploma or university degree.
- 49 Percentage of adults who have a disability.
- $656 Monthly welfare payment for a single person.
- $1,098 Monthly ODSP payment for a single disabled person.
Daily Bread Food Bank
Original Article
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Laurie Monsebraaten
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