Coronavirus: Demand for food banks double pre-Covid levels, and still growing

Wednesday, 15 July 2020

Auckland's Spark Arena was transformed into a food bank to help feed thousands of households going hungry during the lockdown (video first published in June).

At the height of coronavirus lockdown, South Auckland Christian Foodbank was giving out more than three times the food parcels than it would on a normal week.

Things have levelled off now, but the average has settled at 100 per cent more than before lockdown.

The biggest difference manager Ian Foster has seen is that now a lot of people who are coming to the food bank were, until recently, working.

“We’re going to nicer houses, we’re going to people who have been doing fine, who are now in a situation where they’ve lost their jobs.”

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Before Covid-19, 85 per cent of people the food bank supported were beneficiaries.

Foodbanks say they’re helping people who have never asked for help before.

The help they received was mostly one-offs, help when an unexpected bill emptied the food budget, Foster said.

By comparison, the people who have lost jobs may have seen their income halve while their outgoings stay the same; the shortfall in their food budget might be a weekly occurrence.

Foster doesn’t see demand dipping any time soon, especially if more businesses close as forecast.

A volunteer at Te Kuiti food bank makes up food parcels during Level 4 lockdown.

A food bank manager from west of Auckland, who did not want to be named, said this was “just the start”.

Their food bank was now supporting people who had until recently been on six-figure salaries.

“These are people we’ve never ever seen before.”

“It’s really scary,” she said.

Chris Farrelly from the Auckland City Mission said the demand for food parcels was unlike anything they’d seen: “It’s totally off the radar.”

During lockdown, the food bank trebled its daily output. The Mission normally sees spikes at Christmas and in winter, but he said even now it is consistently running at double what it was this time last year.

It had started handing out more food parcels to people from overseas, he said, who had been caught in New Zealand with no way to get home and no access to government benefits.

He didn’t anticipate demand slowing, with the end to the wage subsidy in September bringing “unknown territory”.

“We’re expecting that the need is only going to grow.”

The Salvation Army’s Jono Bell agreed: “We’re on the crest of a wave, but that wave’s going to crash.”

In the two months following the country going into lockdown, The Salvation Army gave out 36,972 food parcels, supporting 11,242 first-time clients.

It is expecting the increased demand to stay high. After the 2008 financial crisis, the charity saw a 100 per cent increase in demand for its services for the following four years. A similar – if not greater – level of need is being predicted again.

Bell said they were supporting migrant workers, those in hard-hit industries such as hospitality, and a cohort of Kiwis who had never had to ask for help before.

“But it’s the 10 per cent of the most impoverished who will once again suffer the most.”