Sooke Food Bank in crisis mode as demand and inflation soars

For the Sooke Food Bank, this summer has turned into one extended episode of Lifestyles of the Working Poor & Hungry. Sooke Food Bank president Kim Metzger is concerned they can’t keep up with the demands of a rapidly increasing population.

“Summer is always a challenging time to begin with. Schools are out and people are away, so sometimes the food bank gets forgotten. Normally the number of clients goes down a little during the summer because the kids are with the grandparents or at camp and people share what they’ve grown in their gardens, but that hasn’t been the case this year.”
Sooke Food Bank president Kim Metzger

While the food bank usually sees an uptick of about seven new households in July, that ballooned to more than 30 last month, a trend Metzger believes will continue for this month as well once the final tally is completed at the end of August. “We sent 30 hampers to Port Renfrew last year at this time and we’re at 50 for the same time period this year,” she cited as an example. “It wouldn’t surprise me if our numbers are up more than 30% by year’s end.”

When Metzger started at the Sooke Food Bank in 2011, they would see 50 to 75 clients on any given Thursday. “Now we’re doing 100 hampers or more on a slow day,” she said. “It puts more stress on the volunteers and they’re being run off their feet. I can’t say enough about the volunteers, they are the absolute heartbeat of the food bank and we couldn’t exist without them, but adding more volunteers won’t address the fact that we need a larger facility and the ability to be open more than three days a month.”

Metzger cites the population boom in Sooke as the major contributor to the pressures the food bank is dealing with. “It’s not slowing down. We’re seeing clients from buildings that aren’t even full yet. What’s also surprising is the number of working people we’re seeing. People who used to come in and make donations whenever they could, whether it was cash or goods, are now lined up waiting for a hamper. It’s great to keep adding much-needed housing, but you have to have the transportation, jobs and services for people in place to handle the increase in population.”

While Metzger emphasized that they are “truly blessed” to have such tremendous support from the community, the strain the current situation has created is surfacing in unprecedented ways. “We have a brain injury group in the parking lot once a month and the ministry has financial workers here every Thursday,” she said. “Lance the hairdresser is cutting hair in our parking lot every Thursday to help out, and Work Link comes out whenever they have a new program that might assist people, but the reality is we need to be open more days and we need more space to be able to continue to serve the community.”