Surviving on just $19 per week to buy groceries
DJ Larkin, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, isn’t looking forward to the coming week. For the second year in a row, Larkin will be participating in the welfare food challenge, surviving on only what $18 will buy at the grocery store — packaged ramen, no-name mac and cheese, canned beans, a loaf of bread.
The sixth annual Welfare Food Challenge is put on by Raise the Rates, a coalition of anti-poverty activists, in hopes of raising awareness of the challenges facing B.C.’s most vulnerable citizens, who must choose between food and shelter in order to survive on social assistance.
Larkin said she felt compelled to participate again this year because it was so difficult last year. “We were hungry. We couldn’t think. We were sad,” said Larkin.
The recent $100-a-month increase to welfare and disability rates in B.C. amounts to an average increase of $1 more per week for welfare recipients to spend on food — an increase from $18 to $19 — after shelter and necessities are accounted for, said Kell Gerlings, an anti-poverty advocate with Raise the Rates.
“Can you survive on $19 a week for food? Can anyone?” asked Gerlings.
The $19 figure is based on what’s left over from the monthly welfare payment of $710 ($375 of which is earmarked for housing, although the average rent for an SRO room in Vancouver is $548, and the cost of housing in regions where there are no SROs is much higher).
Gerlings said data from Statistics Canada show the welfare rate in Vancouver really should be $1,600 per month — known as the “market-basket measure” and which covers costs like eating a healthy diet and paying for rent, and simple necessities of life like toilet paper.
A nutritious “market basket,” which includes small amounts of high-quality protein, vegetables and fruit, would cost $58 a week, nearly triple what welfare recipients have.
Larkin said she and other participants at the Pivot Legal Society will be surviving on the $18 food budget for the week, and not accepting the $1 extra this year because the high cost of housing means people on welfare will not actually have anything extra for food, despite the increase.
Fraser Stuart, a volunteer with the Carnegie Community Action Project, said the recent bump in welfare rates has put more money in the pockets of landlords who prey on their tenants.
“Many of my friends living in SROs said the same week the welfare increase was announced, they got rent increases, many of them demanded as cash under the table,” he said.