Rent and Covid drive more people towards foodbanks this Christmas
Wednesday, 22 December 2021
Food banks across the Wellington region are reporting a sharp rise in demand this Christmas as the skyrocketing cost of housing combines with the Covid-19-related economic crunch, leaving more families with less money for food.
Some food banks say that the number of people needing their help is 50 per cent higher this year than last – itself a difficult year – and that they are seeing more working families who are unable to make ends meet.
“Demand is always high around Christmastime, but each year it seems to grow – things are getting tougher,” said Nicki Dutton, captain at the Porirua Salvation Army, which will be producing about 150 food parcels this Christmas, up from 100 last year.
“Rents are creeping up and up – people’s incomes aren’t keeping up with prices,” she said.
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New Zealand’s annual inflation rate hit 4.9 per cent in the third quarter of this year, the highest in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, house prices have surged, making New Zealand’s housing market one of the least affordable in the developed world.
The average weekly rent in the region has increased 10 per cent in the last year. The average household rent is now $650 per week in Porirua and $620 in Wellington City.
It wasn't uncommon for households with a weekly income of a little over $1000 to be paying $800 on rent, said Damien Hazelwood, a financial mentor for the Salvation Army.
“They don’t end up with $200 to spend on food,” he said. “Once you’ve paid bills, sometimes loans, and petrol… you're almost down to nothing.”
Families traditionally using the Salvation Army’s service were beneficiaries, Hazelwood said. Now they were seeing more working families who were unable to make ends meet.
The Wellington City Mission had also noticed that some households were spending up to 80 per cent of their income on rent. “Families who were just making it work now can’t, and they are asking for help,” said spokeswoman Kath Bier.
Terry Alve, an Anglican priest and overseer at St Anne’s pantry, another Porirua foodbank, said there was a growing discrepancy between the general cost of living, and wages and benefits.
“The gap between income and expenditure is getting wider and wider – it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet, especially at the lower end of the income bracket,” he said. Alve said calls for assistance were on par with 2020, but were three to four times what they were the year prior.
The introduction of Covid-19 vaccination mandates was also having an impact, with some people choosing to leave their jobs rather than get the jabs.
“My take on it is because we have so many more people who have opted out of employment over vaccine mandates,” said Teresea Olsen, general manager of Kōkiri Marae, which runs its Pātaka Kai out of Wainuiomata in Lower Hutt.
While New Zealand’s unemployment rate is low, people who have not been vaccinated rule themselves out of contention for jobs in 40 per cent of the economy.
Kōkiri's service has been providing as many as 80 food parcels a day this week, as well as supplying 200 pre-prepared festive meals for families in need – again, up about 50 per cent on last year.
Most organisations said donors had been generous with food and funding this year.
Geoff Roberts, coordinator at Masterton-based food rescue organisation Waiwaste, said its partnerships with the T&G Fairgrow programme and the recently established NZ Food Network had exponentially increased the amount of food available to its organisations.