Toronto’s food banks see rising demand in inner suburbs.

In total, 896,900 people visited a food bank across Toronto in the year to March, 2015. Demand for food banks has increased since the Canadian recession ended.

The geography of hunger is shifting. Demand at food banks is subsiding in the city core, while in the inner suburbs demand has risen 45 per cent in the past seven years. Several factors are driving the change, among them shifts in the labour market with a prevalence of low-paying service jobs; a hot housing market which is making the city less affordable for lower-income families; and social-assistance payments that haven’t kept up with the cost of living, the study said.
A study by the Metcalf Foundation found Toronto has the highest incidence of working poverty in Canada, at 9.1 per cent of the population. The city core saw a drop in the portion of residents who are working poor, largely because they were priced out of the housing market.

The shift in population is creating a social divide in the city which erodes social cohesion. “Cities have been always divided, we always had rich and poor areas – but the prediction was they’re going to be even more divided if these trends continue and that the divides will be even greater.… That, in fact, is what has happened.
People are relying on food banks for longer stretches of time. The median length of time people come to a food bank has risen to two years, twice as long on average as in 2008, indicating that people are finding it much harder to climb out of poverty.

Home prices in Toronto have climbed 78 per cent in the past decade, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. Average rent in the city has gone up too, by 18.1 per cent for a two-bedroom apartment in that time.
Average monthly income of those using food banks in Toronto is $763. This means that after rent and utilities are paid, people have on average $6.67 to pay for everything else, including food, transportation and prescriptions.

Rising housing costs are forcing the Urban Poor out of Toronto City Centre