They were middle class, now they are lining up for food parcels for the 'new poor'

Wednesday, 30 November 2022

Many families experience food insecurity, like ‘Bill’ and ‘Lisa’, but have now put that period of their lives behind them.

A survey of 110 of the least food secure households shows hardship triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has not gone away, a West Auckland church charity says.

Visionwest Waka Whakakitenga interviewed 100 families for its Hundred Whānau Report and found 62% ran out of food weekly, and that included families which had fallen out of the “middle class” as a result of job losses.

It described these people as “the new poor”.

Despite impressions the impacts of Covid were retreating, the latest food security survey by Visionwest showed needs in the three months to end September had not dropped back to pre-Covid levels, the charity said.

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“Food support provided by Visionwest is still close to the same rate as at February 2022,” said Brook Turner, the charity’s head of service development and partnerships.

The charity continued to provide more than 400 food parcels to food-deprived households each week.

At its most acute, food insecurity involves running out of food completely. But lower levels of food insecurity include having to ration food, or having to eat poor-quality food.

While the Visionwest survey was locally-focused, the Ministry of Health tracks food insecurity at a national level. The last time it did so was in 2016, when 174,000 of children lived in homes that sometimes, or often ran out of food.

While Māori and Pacific children were more likely to live in food=insecure homes, 57 in every 100 children living in food insecure households were Pākehā.

“We were very grateful there was a service there to help us when we needed it, especially for our children,” said ‘Lisa’, who with her partner ‘Bill’, endured several years of food insecurity.

Visionwest said only about 15% of its food parcels went to Pākehā families.

One West Auckland couple who have experienced dark days of food insecurity agreed to speak with Stuff, but asked not to be identified.

They relied for several years on food parcels from Visionwest.

“We had our first home, and tried to do things independently. That’s when we first experienced the struggle of living and the costs,” said Lisa, who became a mum at just 19.

“We struggled to have enough food in the house to feed our daughter,” she said.

Sometimes they ran out of food, but mostly their understocked cupboards contained plain starchy foods rice, pasta and bread, and not enough of the nourishing foods they and their children really needed.

The struggle became a crisis when Bill suffered debilitating depression, and was unable to work for several years.

“The majority of thoughts were really negative; feeling like I was useless as a father, that I couldn’t do the things I should be doing as a father like putting food on the table,” Bill said.

The family, who now have three children, no longer live with food insecurity.

Bill is now in higher-paying work as a qualified landscaper, and Lisa has launched a photography business. They are skilled at budgeting, having been trained by Visionwest financial mentors.

They are grateful for the help they have had, and tell others not to be ashamed to ask for help.

Sometimes asking for help plays a part in making sure there is food on the table, said Bill.

Jo Wolferstan, money mentor team leader at Visionwest, said: “The range of clients we see is changing.”

“More often they are people who have never had to reach out for support before. I dislike the term middle-class, but that would describe what some of the people are, or were. People lost their jobs in the pandemic, especially people in trades and the hospitality sector, and they had nothing to fall back on,” she said.

West Auckland charity Visionwest is drawing attention to food insecurity.

Two-thirds of those seeking help with food had only tumbled into financial hardship in the last two years, Visionwest reported.

“Covid is often blamed, but is everything Covid-related? It is too easy to make it a scapegoat. Covid provided a final layer of pressure that was already coming from increased living costs and high rents or high interest rates on home loans,” Wolferstan said.

Few families ever accumulated a financial cushion to cope with hard times, she said.

Financial collapse could happen amazingly quickly, she said.

Families that had sought food assistance reported high levels of anxiety and stress, said Debbie Griffiths, Visionwest community connector.

“In many cases these struggles have, as a starting point, stress caused by food insecurity and lack of income”, she said.

One in five families seeking food support relied not on benefits, ACC, or NZ Super, but on salary, or income from self-employment.

There was a rise in food insecure pensioners, Turner said.

The cost of living crisis, with rampant inflation the Reserve Bank Te Pūtea Matua was fighting by cranking up interest rates to trigger a recession, was causing hardship.

Low incomes were particularly sensitive to inflation, Visionwest said. Prices rose 7.2% in the 12 months to the end of September.

Rising housing costs as a result of rent increases, and rising home loan repayment rates, and Visionwest said the level of government support for struggling families had to be increased, including forgiving benefit debt for people who undergo budgeting training with financial mentors.

The Visionwest report came out on the same day that PaymentsNZ released a survey showing 25% of people would be unable to make a surprise expense.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Visionwest gives out 400 food parcels per month. It is per week. Corrected December 7, 2.55pm