Rising Food and housing insecurity on Cortes Island

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Cortes Island's most economically challenged residents appear to be facing another bleak winter this year. 

Filipe Figueira, Coordinator of the Cortes Island Food Bank, explained, “We’ve definitely seen a huge rise in general economic distress over the last couple of years. I think that covers two key areas. One is food insecurity,  the other one is housing insecurity, which feeds into economic insecurity as well.”  

“In terms of food insecurity, we all know  prices  have increased significantly over the last few years. I don’t think the reported cost of living index truly reflects what's going on. I think everybody's experiencing  higher food costs, and that has an impact obviously.”

“We are seen as a food insecure location. We don't have a lot of big stores which sell cheaper food. We don't have easy transport to places where food is a little cheaper. That puts us particularly at risk with food prices.” 

“I did some research recently, and  the official cumulative food price rise over 10 years is about 48.7%. I think that's conservative. I think the real food prices that everybody experiences are much, much higher than that and certainly wages haven't increased that much over 10 years. They've probably declined in real terms.”

“You can see evidence of this in the stores. There was recently a story about the dollar store in the US and I think in Canada as well. Their sales drop off in the last half of the month because low income people buy stuff from them, but by the end of the month they've run out of money.” 

Cortes Currents: Have you seen an increase in the number of clients coming to the food bank?  

Filipe Figueira: “Over the summer months we always see a bit of  a decline because people get seasonal work and they're able to grow their own food and that kind of thing.  We're expecting  this winter the numbers will rise again. We reached a peak of around 86 people per month in January of last year. We expect to go to those numbers again because the economic situation has increased and people don't really have the reserves to survive.”

“We're seeing a lot more people in housing that's precarious. A lot of people live on boats, in shelters and in trailers that don't have proper  kitchen facilities, refrigeration, freezers, that kind of thing. So that makes it really challenging.”