More teens, single seniors arriving at food bank

Community Care seeing a rise in young people in need of help

More teenagers and young adults than ever before are showing up at Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold looking for food and help over the holiday, says the food bank CEO.

“I can’t speak to the reasons they are here, but they are mostly arriving alone,” said Betty-Lou Souter, who says there are already 284 more young people arriving at the food bank than last year.

In 2017, 1,014 teens and young adults turned to Community

Care for help.

Souter said the spike in young people coming to the food bank is the largest change in a significant demographic shift in the kinds of people needing help over the holiday season.

There has also been a rise in single seniors and single men requiring assistance, she said.

Overall, Community Care expects to provide food, clothes, toys and other assistance to at least 3,000 families over Christmas. It costs about $375,000 to help them all, Souter said, and the food bank is about $200,000 away from that goal.

The food bank did get a lift from the annual CKTB 610 AM hosted Great Holiday Food Drive which recently raised about $308,000 in food, clothes, toys and cash donations.

As Community Care sees changes in the demographics of people in need of help, local shelters are filling up.

The Out of Cold program, which provides warm meals and a place to sleep at local churches through the winter, is regularly finding shelters are filling to capacity. When that happens, volunteers help guide people other community resources.

The pressure is coming from two places, according to Souter and Out of the Cold’s organizers: the arrival of homeless people from outside of Niagara and the rising cost of housing.

Souter said as shelters in Toronto and Hamilton have filled up, people have moved to other communities in search of help, including St. Catharines.

“It’s the perfect storm,” she said. “It’s the rise in costs, the affordable housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the mental health crisis. It’s all happening at once.”

Community Care will accept donations for its Christmas program until noon on Christmas Eve, which is also when the food bank closes registration for the holiday program.

“We won’t turn anyone away,” said Souter. “But noon on Christmas Eve is the hard deadline when we close.”

JULIE JOCSAK THE ST. CATHARINES STANDARD City Coun. Matt Harris dressed as an elf takes a food donation from Jaime Hrynczuk, who was dropping off donations from Community Addiciton Services of Niagara during Community Care’s annual Great Holiday Food Drive at Market Square in downtown St. Catharines last Friday.