Hunger is on the rise in the Flin Flon area as the Lord’s Bounty Food Bank comes off one of its busiest years yet.
Visits increased 14 per cent for the year ended Sept. 30 as nearly 400 residents relied on the charity to put food on the table.
“Lots of young people have moved into town,” said Dennis Hydamaka, food distribution chairperson for the food bank. “Some of them are looking for work and some have just come into town.”
Figures released at the food bank’s recent annual meeting show there were 2,434 visits in 2013-14, up from 2,138 the previous year – an extra 25 visits per month.
Single clients
Hydamaka was surprised by the percentage of single people without children now relying on the Hapnot Street-based food bank.
Single people make up 31 per cent of clients, the most of any grouping, followed by
families (29 per cent), single parents (25 per cent) and couples (15 per cent).
Of the food bank’s 393 clients last year, 44 per cent were children or teenagers while six per cent were seniors, some as old as their late 70s.
For Hydamaka, filling the hunger gap is both fulfilling and trying.
“It’s tough, especially in a town where many have so much and many have so little,” he said. “When you see people struggling to put a piece of bread on the table for a couple of children, or children are going to school without breakfast, it really tears at your heart.”
Due to limited resources, the food bank generally limits clients to two visits a month. With each visit, clients receive two days’ worth of food for each member of their family.
In cases of extreme destitution, weekly visits are permitted until a client’s life circumstances improve. Fortunately, Hydamaka says, such cases are not overly common.
Donations fall
The rise in demand coincided with a drop in donations as charitable food drives of yesteryear have been discontinued.
Hydamaka said the food bank was fortunate to have cash reserves that allowed for the purchase of $9,634 worth of food to complement donated items.
He is optimistic that donations will pick up, as Hapnot Collegiate and Northland Ford partnered on a recent food drive and the food bank’s donation bin at the Co-op has been getting fuller.
While that’s good news, Hydamaka also anticipates a rise in clients as the result of increases to property taxes and utility bills.
“That will impact, I expect, the low-income people who have their own homes,” he said, adding that about 10 per cent of existing clients are homeowners.
Hydamaka also worries that landlords facing higher bills on their properties will raise rents on suites as vacancies allow.
This past fiscal year was the sixth-busiest year to date for the food bank, which began operations in 1991-92.
The lion’s share of last year’s clients – 80 per cent – lived in Flin Flon, with 11 per cent in Denare Beach and nine per cent in Creighton.
