Local food bank use is surging

Poverty is made up of many faces, and looking people in the eyes and seeing how hungry they are can be difficult, says Robin Adair.

“It’s one thing to know one thing about poverty,” said Adair. “It’s another thing to see it twice a week, right in your face.”

Adair has been volunteering at the Good Neighbours Care Centre, a food bank on Sherbrooke Street in Peterborough, for half a decade.

He said he’s seen the sharp increase in demand on food banks the past few years, and it’s not going down.

One woman outside the Food Pantry run by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul on Murray Street said she appreciates the work of volunteers to make sure she is able to eat.

“I don’t know what I’d do if (the food banks) weren’t here. I’d be struggling because they help out really good,” said the woman, who asked to not have her name published.

On Saturday, the Food Pantry saw a record number people show up on a single day, with 215 lining up for food over an hour and a half.

Sue Mazziotti-Armitage, client care co-ordinator for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, said that need shows the evolving food crisis is growing.

“And that deplenishes everything we have in here,” said Mazziotti-Armitage.

The woman outside the Food Pantry, who is currently unemployed, said when money is tight, she can afford to buy food for her animals, but there’s not always cash left over for her to eat.

“It’s the cost of apartments that are too much,” said the woman. “People on disability, welfare, and old age, with the prices going up? It’s hard to rent when you don’t have a whole lot of money left,” she said.

The Good Neighbours Care Centre has been open for 34 years. It receives food from three different Peterborough grocery stores, plus shipments from Kawartha Food Share.

Shipments include fresh vegetables such as mushrooms or tomatoes and dry goods such as pastas or chips.

In the morning, clients line up out the door and around the building to receive food items they might need to get through the month.

“Two years ago we, all of a sudden, saw about a 15 per cent increase in demand,” Adair said.

“There will be about 8,800 clients coming through the door in a year, they will take home food for about 23,000 family members. That’s way up.”

It’s the “working poor” who are using food banks, he said. These are people who have jobs, but those incomes aren’t enough to keep up with the cost of living.

Mazziotti-Armitage said the Food Pantry recently saw the highest ever number of people show up in a single day, and the half-empty shelves of their store room show it.

“We could not believe we went through that much,” she said, adding it was a warm day right before the end of the month, so peoples’ government assistance hadn’t yet shown up.

But much of the Food Pantry’s clientele are also working, or they’re students who can’t find jobs in Peterborough. While there was a decrease in use during the pandemic when the federal government was handing out additional support, that quickly went away.

“It just started increasing exponentially,” said Mazziotti-Armitage, noting there doesn’t appear to be any relief in view.

It costs $30,000 a month to run the Food Pantry, which covers food costs. But costs have gone up “double in the past eight months,” said St. Vincent de Paul treasurer Paul Beamish.

“We get funding through our churches, we get funded through our Vinnies thrift stores, and thank God for that,” Mazziotti-Armitage said.