Food & Poverty in the City

It is easy to assume that food is readily available in the city when large supermarkets with aisles brimming over with food, are now the norm. It is also easy to assume that those who cannot buy food are being taken care of by food banks, shelters, soup kitchens and whatever other emergency resources are present.

The reality is that many people in the city are not able to purchase an adequate amount of food to meet basic nutritional requirements. In addition, emergency food providers are becoming overwhelmed as they continue to feed a growing number of people using their services. This situation is an absolute tragedy as food is one the most basic building blocks of a person’s development - physical and mental.

What is Poverty?

In Canada, poverty is measured using Low Income Cut Off Lines (LICOs) developed by Statistics Canada and depend on the size of a family and the size of the community in which they live. Generally speaking, a family is living in poverty if they are spending 56.2% of their income or more, on the essentials of food, clothing and shelter. Another term often used with statistics is the poverty gap, referring to how far families fall below the appropriate LICO threshold. For example, if a family has a total income of $16,000 but the LICO is considered to be $21,000, then their poverty gap would be $5,000.

What is the Local Poverty Situation?

As would be expected, poverty rates differ from place to place and are dependent on a variety of factors. The Canadian Council on Social Development recently published a report by Kevin K. Lee entitled

Urban Poverty in

Canada: A Statistical Profile. This report provides an excellent set of statistics on urban poverty and is useful for the VFPO in terms of directing our policy efforts. The numbers for Vancouver are unfortunately, rather startling. (Note: All figures are 1995 unless otherwise stated).

First let’s deal with Greater Vancouver which, statistically speaking includes the cities of Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam and Burnaby. Greater Vancouver with a total population of 1,802,400 has a poverty rate of 23%, meaning that 23% of families are living below the LICO threshold. This is almost one quarter of our population! Not surprisingly, seniors, women and youth are most likely to suffer from poverty and within the recent immigrant and aboriginal populations, poverty rates are particularly high (52% and 49% respectively). Within the GVRD, the poverty rate has risen from 17.9% in 1990 up to the latest figure of 23%, in just 5 years.

Turning to Vancouver proper with a population of 506,200, things get worse with the poverty rate rising to 31% with the majority being youth and children. In contrast, Burnaby has a poverty rate of 27.8%, Richmond 26%, Coquitlam 22.3% and Surrey 21.4%. Within Vancouver’s aboriginal population of 10,300, 66% are living in poverty. There has been a rather sharp increase in the Vancouver poverty rate as well, rising from 24.8% in 1990 to its 1995 level of 31%.

Looking at poverty gaps, it appears that the poor are a long way from even reaching basic LICO levels. In Vancouver and Greater Vancouver, the average poverty gap is $13,100.

When considering education and employment levels, the study looks at those people aged 15-64. Of those considered poor in this age range within Vancouver, almost 60% had either a secondary or post secondary