There is a new twist to the problem of hunger in Toronto. The demands placed on food banks in the city's downtown has dropped by about 16 percent. But that number doesn't reflect an improvement.
All it means is that the hungry are on the move. While demand is down in the core, it's up in the city's suburbs by a whopping 45 percent. Overall demand for food bank services is up 12 percent since the recession in 2008.
The data comes from The Daily Bread Food Bank's annual report: "Who's Hungry 2015 - A Tale of Two Cities."
Gail Nyberg, the executive director of the organization, says she is surprised by the numbers. Nyberg says there are services downtown, including infrastructure, but the further out you go from the downtown, there is less.
"We're scurrying to find the infrastructure to build food banks, but they don't have the meal programs, they don't have shelters that we have in the downtown. To get assistance, they have to walk three and four kilometers to find a food bank or a program because they are just not like they were and that's very difficult and we're finding that people are going hungry," said Nyberg
The report also suggests that Toronto's condominium boom and skyrocketing rents are pushing people out of core and into the suburbs, where transit and social services are more sparse.
It also says people are using the food banks for almost twice as long as they did seven years ago, suggesting people are having a more difficult time climbing out of poverty.
The report was based on interviews with 1,000 people who used food banks last year. Nyberg says it's a symbol of poverty and she can't understand why that hasn't become an issue in the Canadian election campaign.
