Single and seniors most vulnerable to hunger

Precarious employment and stretched social programs leave thousands vulnerable to food insecurity, according to the Ontario Association of Food Banks.

Thestar.com
Nov. 30, 2015
By Sara Mojtehedzadeh

When the province’s food bank association met recently to discuss the latest research on who is going hungry in Ontario, executive Doug Smith suddenly piped up.

“I can relate,” he told his colleagues. “That’s my own mother.”

Ontario has seen a 35 per cent jump in the number of senior citizens visiting food banks over the past year, according to the Ontario Association of Food Banks’ 2015 report, and the highest number on record of single people accessing the service.

Doug’s mum, Shirley, says she feels lucky to have narrowly escaped the trend: She’s never used a food bank, but after her husband passed away, she says she would have been “out on the street” without the financial support of her six children.

The report singles out three main factors in the province’s food security problem: the rise of precarious employment, the soaring cost of living, and insufficient social support programs.

For Shirley Smith, it’s a case of a meager pension stretched too thin. She receives just $106 a month for her 25 years of service as an Eaton’s inventory clerk. The report notes that single seniors in Ontario receiving the maximum government allowances will live on just $1342.78 a month, leaving them “increasingly vulnerable to falling into poverty.”

“I hear that (the cost of) food is just atrocious,” Smith said. “To buy a roast beef, you basically have to sign your life away.”

“I was quite surprised and a little bit shaken that, really, our seniors come to the end of their life and they’re living in poverty,” her son Doug added. “They’re living a hand-to-mouth existence.”

While the number of individual food bank users is slightly down, from 375,000 in March 2014 to 358,963 in March 2015, there was a total of 10,000 more overall visits to food banks this year. The research also highlights the plight of single Ontarians of all ages, who now make up half of all food bank users in the province.

OAFB executive director Sharon Lee says much of that shift can be attributed to the changing nature of work in the province.

“If you’re only contract or you don’t have stable job security, it’s very hard to figure out how you’re going to manage your weekly expenses. And if you’re a single person it’s not like you have anyone else to share expenses,” she told the Star.

In the GTA and Hamilton, fewer than half of all jobs are full-time, stable positions, and across the province, one in three jobs are now temporary, contract, or part-time. An Ontarian working a full-time job at minimum wage, currently $11.25 an hour, would still fall 20 percent below the province’s low-income measure. And while 65 per cent of food bank users are on social assistance, about a third are working full- or part-time jobs.

At the same time, the report notes, living expenses are constantly on the rise. The cost of fresh fruit and vegetables has gone up by more than 6 per cent in the past year, while the price of fresh and frozen meat has risen 10.7 per cent, according to the report. The average food bank client spends more than 70 per cent of income on housing, pointing to the dire need for affordable living arrangements.

“We would propose to the Ontario government that Ontario housing benefit has to help close the gap between rent and income, and that we should invest in the creation of well-paid permanent employment opportunities in Ontario,” Lee said.