Toronto food banks received a record number of visitors during the pandemic, according to a new report from the Daily Bread and North York Harvest food banks.
The 2021 “Who is hungry?” poll found that between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, there were 1.45 million visits to the city’s food banks.
That marks the highest number of visits ever recorded and a 47 percent increase compared to the previous year.
In the report, the authors say the level of growth is “unprecedented,” noting that visits to food banks in Canada’s most populous city rarely increase more than five to 10 percent year over year. .
Read more:
Canadian Food Bank Usage Increased 20% During Pandemic, Report Finds
A major exception was in 2010, when the number increased by 14%, following a period of financial crisis.
“For some of us, it seems like normalcy is returning,” said Talia Bronstein, author of the report and vice president of research and advocacy for the Daily Bread Food Bank.
“Things are opening up, pandemic restrictions are being lifted, but for many, that is not the case. It is still a time of crisis ”.
The report also found that food bank customers spend a median 68 percent of their income on housing, putting them at greater risk of homelessness.
“We don’t know what the future holds, but there will almost certainly be another crisis in our future,” Bronstein said.
“We have to ask ourselves: are we going to be prepared? And I think what this pandemic has shown us is that we really weren’t, and that is why we need to make investments to build resilience in communities. “
According to the survey, for the first time, new customers to food banks outnumbered existing ones.
Toronto Mayor John Tory addressed housing as a key economic issue for the city during a news conference Monday.
“In the end, it will reduce the number of people who have to rely on food banks if we have more affordable housing,” he told reporters.
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Reference-globalnews.ca