A pandemic followed by a wildfire evacuation and the rising cost of living have driven more Yellowknifers to seek food aid and it’s putting a strain on local food banks.
“We’ve certainly gone up 50 per cent or more (over the past three or four months), and every week there’s two or three new families coming,” said Tony Brushett, executive director for the Salvation Army, adding that the increase in usage is closer to 100 per cent over the past year.
The food bank is now serving up to 60 families a week. There are also more people who came in looking for snack and lunch box for school-aged children compared to the past, he added.
Consequently, the food bank is facing a budget shortfall as the fiscal year ends in March.
“We’ve already spent all of our food budget for the year, and we still have about four months left in our fiscal year. So we now have to dig into our own resources from our donors and our own bank account to get the money to purchase the food that we need,” he said.
Brushett believes the evacuation, which lasted for about a month, was a tipping point for many families who were already on the edge of being able to afford necessities.
“We’ve had some come here who have never used a food bank before, but they’re saying it’s a choice of paying the bills and eating,” he said.
He added that the food bank is also seeing more single people who are having trouble finding affordable housing in the city.
“They are coming here now on a very regular basis, almost as if you were going to the grocery store,” he said. “You come to the food bank, you get enough food to get you through, hopefully three or four or five days, and then you try to find it from you own resources.”
Brushett hopes the demand will level off soon, but he is worried about the elevated demand continuing.
“If we were to continue that trend for the year, that’s another 100 or 200 families every month, and it’s going to be difficult to keep up with that,” he said. “Yellowknife of course, as tough as it is, but across the country that’s the trend right now, people are struggling and all the food banks are finding that the need is increasing a lot.
“If you were to figure it out, it may even be one or two per cent of our population are using our food bank, and we’re not the only food bank in town. So there’s more people using the food bank here per capita.”
He explained that there are two other smaller food banks in the city, and they are also experiencing similar increases in demand. He said the food banks work together with Food Rescue, an umbrella group that collects and distributes food from local stores and warehouses.