Food fight
The fastest-rising group of food-bank users are neither homeless, on welfare or
on EI. They have jobs, but they just can't make ends
meet
National Post
: Charles Mitchell
To look at her, you'd
never think of Rose Agular as a food-bank user. The
45-year-old single mother is not homeless. Neither is she
on welfare or EI. She's employed full-time as a
cashier at a coffee shop. In a typical week she works at least 42 hours and
sometimes as many as 50. However, she earns only $7.85 an hour, which she says
is not enough to buy groceries after paying rent and babysitting expenses for
her eight-year-old daughter, Kim. So for the first
time a few weeks ago, she turned to a food bank for help.
"When it comes to the food for me I can
survive, but with my daughter there's nothing at all. I don't have enough
money," says Agular, who spoke on condition her
real name not be used. "It's a supplement for my
daughter because sometimes I can't buy food for her."
Before Agular turned to
food banks she would always drop a can or two into the
collection bin at her grocery store or her child's public school. Now she's on the receiving end of others' charity, a predicament
she finds hard to stomach.
"I feel guilty for myself for going there, because
some people don't have a job or the government gives them money, but it's not
enough for them to live on," Agular says.
Agular is in fact among the fastest-growing segment of food-bank users: people
who have jobs. According to the Canadian Association of Food Banks, some
778,000 people across
Critics point to rising rental housing costs across
"In
Spencer believes there's a
direct link between government policy on wages and shelter and the rising
number of employed people seeking help from food banks.
"This is a group operating at the minimum
wage," he says. "So if you raise their housing costs and don't change
anything else, then by definition the amount left for food goes down. The housing
survival pressure pushes the food survival pressure."
Adds David Hulchanski,
director of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the
Once you factor in rising inflation and the high
cost of living in
"You have to get around," Hulchanski says, "and for a middleclass person a
two-dollar TTC ride is cheap, it's a good deal. But if you're on minimum wage
what percentage of your hourly wage is
two-dollars?"
Rose Agular earns
slightly more than minimum wage but still can't afford
transportation. Fortunately, she earns about $8 in tips every night, money that
goes toward TTC fares. Half of her salary is slotted
for the $691 rent on her subsidized two-bedroom apartment. The rest pays for a
babysitter. It would be easier, she says, if she could
place her daughter in daycare, but Agular works the
graveyard shift. Before clocking into work at 10 p.m., she drops Kim off at the
babysitter for the night and picks her up to take her to school in the morning.
"You can find a cheaper babysitter, but you
don't know them and you can't trust your daughter with them. I found someone
who takes care of her, and I can trust her."
Finding a babysitter is not a problem for Mario
Soto. His wife stays home with their two sons, aged six and one, while the
31-year-old PhD candidate heads off to his teaching assistant job at the
Soto (not his real name) makes more than $32 an
hour, but he usually works fewer than 10 hours a week. That's
still more than a minimum-wage worker grosses in a week, and he supplements his
income with occasional consulting work during the school year, a job at which
he works full-time in the summer. Nonetheless, because of rent and skyrocketing
tuition he, too, has resorted to food banks to help support his family.
"A friend told me about the food bank,"
Soto says, adding the friend told him "the people are friendly and you can
get some stuff to survive on your budget."
He says he feels no stigma taking the handouts
because as an international student he finds Canadians in general more
accepting of people who rely on social and community programs.
"People here don't care that much about what
you do. And you're free to do whatever you want to do," he says.
Soto says he's confident
he'll be able to support his family once he graduates in a year or two.
Working more might not help Agular,
who's worried about what's going to happen come
January, when her geared-to-income rent is likely to increase because she
worked more hours this year than she did in 2002. Still, she hopes she will not
have to use the food bank for much longer.
"If I can find a day job then I can save a lot
of money," she says. "I don't need to go to the food bank any more because I know there's a lot of
people more than me that need it."
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Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.