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More households are relying on the Brantford food bank and community meal programs, says the executive director of Community Resource Service.
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November saw an uptick in visits to the food bank, which is operated by CRS, said Heather Vanner, adding that she believes the numbers will continue to rise.
“Initially, we saw a decrease in use with the pandemic, but, with government (wage support) programs now ending, we are beginning to see the number of people who need our service rise,” Vanner said.
“I think we could continue to see increases in the use of our services, particularly as the cost of living continues to go up. Increases in the cost of food and housing will contribute to that, as will overall inflation rates. ”
The food bank, which is based at 1100 Clarence St S., provided assistance to 758 households in November, up from 663 in October. The number of seniors who received food bank assistance rose to 120 last month from 94 in October.
In addition, 1,041 households registered for this year’s Christmas Baskets program, up from 941 in 2020.
But those figures tell only part of the story.
Vanner said the food bank provides non-perishable and perishable food to 18 community meal and snack programs, which also have noted a dramatic increase in use.
There were 95,625 resident visits to the food bank and other local meal and food programs from April to October. That’s up from 45,279 for the same time period in 2020.
Figures provided by the food bank say 709,446 meals were offered in the community from April to October, up from 299,822 for the same time period in 2020.
Vanner said the food bank distributed more than 1.1 million pounds of food from April 2020 to March 2021.
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The 2021 Hunger Report, released this week by Feed Ontario, the province’s largest collective of hunger-relief organizations, said food bank use is a record high.
In 2020, 592,308 people across Ontario used emergency food support, visiting more than 3.6 million times. The figures represent increases of 10 and 12 per cent, respectively, from 2019, representing the largest single-year increases in more than a decade.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on food bank and meal program use, other factors are at work, the report says.
“Like gasoline on a fire, COVID-19 only compounded income security and affordability issues in Ontario,” Siu Mee Cheng, interim executive director of Feed Ontario, said in a statement following release of the report. “This includes the province’s insufficient social safety net, the rise in precarious employment and increasingly unaffordable housing and living costs.”
Although government programs, like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, helped many people avoid a crisis, some of Ontario’s most vulnerable citizens still fell through the cracks, the report says.
“The rising number of older adults relying on food banks for assistance is a trend that we have been monitoring closely since 2017,” said Cheng.
“While there are a number of contributing factors to this trend, the most significant is how the growing lack of affordability associated with housing and the cost of living have become, particularly for those on a fixed income and low-income earners.”
Another demographic highlighted in the report are people with disabilities, who represent a third of all food bank users in Ontario.
For information on how to donate to the Brantford food bank visit www.crs-help.ca/foodbank/get-involved/donate-food/.
The food bank can be reached at 519-751-4357. ext. 238.
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