Struggling foodbanks brace for winter surge

Otago Daily Times

a day ago

By Amy Williams of RNZ
Foodbanks already struggling with demand are bracing for a winter surge and calling on the government for guaranteed permanent funding.
The coalition was providing $15 million for the community food sector from July but ongoing funding is uncertain.
Manukau Foodbank, one of the largest in the country, recently had to cap the number of people getting food parcels.
Manager Joel Williams said they supported more than 200 families each week, buying staples to plug gaps in donated goods.
"We've got that mixture of high quality great products, rice, milk powder... down here, tonic water and crackers. That's the tension that we sit in all the time."
The foodbank, run by the Salvation Army, had operated out of a warehouse in industrial Manukau for 30 years.
Williams said they had been forced to open an online booking system and cap numbers because of the constant queues of people waiting for food parcels and some missing out.
"How many more need to be fed? I don't see an end to that number. We'll occasionally be closed for a public holiday and we'll select a day of the week and double the numbers for that day.
"Those slots get filled up within 15 minutes. We've got an online booking system and the bookings, they're like Chili Pepper tickets."
Williams said they were seeing some people who were employed, but most were without work.
"There's a vast number of unemployed people in New Zealand now, and the largest number of people that we see are unemployed or partially employed, on a benefit of some type.
"The two largest cohorts of people are solo mums or single older men really struggling with rent."
He said over the past year there had also been an increase in migrants asking for help, as well as people who were fully employed or unemployed for the first time.
The Ministry of Social Development's latest monthly update in May showed there was an 11 percent annual rise - just over 21,000 people - on the JobSeeker benefit, to 213,831. The unemployment rate was 5.1 percent.
The Salvation Army ran 60 foodbanks across the country. Food security manager Sonya Cameron said another year with some government funding was a relief.
"It's fantastic for us, it feels like a reprieve. We had expected that funding could have ended this July so now we've got another year.
"Minister [Louise] Upston is saying very clearly that she does not expect the funding to be permanent, so we're still needing to look at how we seek ways to reduce our costs and try to become financially sustainable."
Cameron said foodbanks provided vital support for people and needed ongoing funding.
"People come into our centres because they need food and from there we're able to then connect them to the other support that they need."
Auckland City Mission also confirmed it expected to receive approximately the same amount of government funding as last year, which meant it will not have to reduce the number of food parcels it distributes. One-off funding only
It came after a collective of foodbanks wrote to Social Development Minister Louise Upston asking for ongoing sustainable funding before this year's budget announcement.
Foodbanks started to receive direct government funding in 2020 during the pandemic, and over the following four years more than $200 million was invested in the sector. Since then it had been on a one-off basis only.
Food security funding was extended with one-off grants to 13 providers last year, including the mission, which received a one-off $700,000 from the ministry for food parcels.
The ministry said it was reviewing the way foodbanks were funded.
Kore Hiakai / Zero Hunger Collective was a group of organisations working together to address food-related poverty. Executive director Tric Malcolm said its monthly data showed demand for food parcels had not eased since Christmas, and winter increased that pressure.
"Capacity I think was passed a long time ago. What we've heard from foodbanks across the country for more than 12 months now is that they're trying to find ways to make everything stretch."
She said ongoing government funding would help foodbanks pay for the staples they had to buy.
"The level of resource available in the community has decreased, there's less people able to donate from their generous pockets because everybody's struggling with the cost of living... and there seems to be less philanthropic money that's available as well."
The collective met with Upston after the recent Budget and expected to have another meeting in coming months.
"When we came out of the global financial crisis we knew that food parcelling had increased exponentially, and if we kept food parcelling we're sticking a band aid on the problem."
The latest Health Survey found one in four children, 27 percent, live in households that run out of food often or sometimes.
"We've been inviting government to help us, help community, help business, help philanthropy find more long lasting solutions and at the same time make sure no-one in this moment goes hungry long term," she said. 'More people than ever are falling off the cliff'
Looking ahead, Williams would like to see the causes of poverty addressed.
"Foodbanks are not an appropriate response to food poverty. Poverty exists for one simple reason - people don't have enough money. There's a lot of things the government can do to change that.
"There's a desire in our sector, in the food rescue and foodbank sector, to put ourselves out of a job, to not be needed. That would be nice.
"We're the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and it just seems that more people than ever are falling off the cliff. Sure would be nice if somebody built a fence."