Food bank use reveals impacts of pandemic on Hamiltonians

The number - and type - of people using food banks has shifted over the last five months, revealing clues about how the pandemic is affecting Hamiltonians.

Before the pandemic, we were feeding about 200 a day," said Antoinette Laffrenier, the operations manager at King's Way Outreach Centre, a King Street East non-profit that supports people without stable housing. And now it's going up to close to 300."

Demand slowed in the early days of the pandemic, but began to increase dramatically" in May, and hasn't stopped growing.

One of the most significant trends has been the increase in households accessing the food bank for the first time. Laffrenier said the centre has seen a 15 per cent increase in new clients in the last few months. Young families, particularly recent newcomers to Canada, account for about 10 per cent, while seniors make up the rest.

Laffrenier said first-time food bank users are often nervous because they don't know what to expect. King's Way works to reduce stigma by not asking clients for personal information, such as pay stubs and bills.

Everybody that comes to our door gets served because we feel at any given time in your life, you may need that food bank," she said. So regardless of whether they own a home or they own a car, we're still going to service you because they could have lost their jobs and they're still trying to make the payments on everything else."

Welcome Inn Community Centre in Hamilton's north end served 1,037 unique households in just six months - about 250 households more than expected. Executive director Jamie VanderBerg suspects the bulk of the increase is first-time food bank users - people who were laid off or whose hours were cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The total number of food bank visits - and the overall amount of food distributed - remains comparable to previous years.

There's more households who are accessing the food bank, but they are coming less often," he said.

VanderBerg speculates that many regular clients are not coming in as frequently because they are receiving government benefits that didn't exist before, like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

Because there was an influx of government money through various programs, they still needed to access the food bank and more different families accessed the food bank, but they had to do it less often," he said.

Welcome Inn has been able to keep up with demand, but VanderBerg says their work is far from done.

Traditionally, the curve of food bank use is delayed after an economic crisis," he said. So I would fully expect that our busiest times that are a result of the pandemic are going to be over the next year to year and a half as the economy settles back down and those jobs are recreated."

Staff at Good Shepherd's Venture Centre food bank are also preparing for a wave of post-pandemic demand.

Good Shepherd saw a 33 per cent dip in food bank use almost immediately after the pandemic hit. In 2019, the centre was serving between 160 and 170 households a day. Now, they are serving between 100 and 120 households a day.

I don't understand the numbers; why they've dropped," program supervisor Mark Tennant said. I thought our numbers would continue to climb, but who would have known that we'd be living through a pandemic."

Tennant said he's worried that former clients have been forced out of the city due to rising housing costs or are receiving benefits that could push them into debt.

Where are those people now?" he said. It's really hard to put your finger on poverty sometimes."

Kate McCullough is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach her via email: kmccullough@thespec.com