As the cost of living continues to rise, food insecurity is becoming more prevalent among university students, more and more of whom are relying on the Guelph Student FoodBank.
“A greater amount of students are registering for the food bank than we've ever seen,” said food bank coordinator Alanna Wyllie.
The number of students accessing the food bank goes up each year, but Wyllie said the pandemic exacerbated that increase.
In 2020, 283 students had completed the food bank’s intake form. By 2022, there were 349 new students registered.
“A (nearly) 70 person jump from 2020 is a lot,” she said. “But there has also been an increase in people relying on the service (more regularly), which is not great, because its purpose is to supplement grocery costs.”
This isn't surprising, considering it's estimated far more than 20 per cent of U of G students are facing food insecurity.
Several other services have been introduced in response, including The Campus Food Market, which offers fresh food on a sliding pay scale, and MealCare Guelph's campus community fridge.
Still, it's hard to keep up. The growing number of students in need, coupled with limited staff and small budget has led to the food bank starting a wait list for the first time. Currently, they have 267 registered visitors and 92 people on the wait list.
“It's not ideal. We are trying to figure out how we can not have a wait list anymore,” she said.
Of the registered visitors, 77 per cent are international students.
“International tuition is considerably higher than domestic students, so that definitely has an influence. They get a stipend, but it's not enough to cover all their costs,” she said. “Also, (the cost of) housing being so high makes it so that they have to rely on extra support in terms of food and stuff.”
The majority of visitors are also graduate students; 210 of the 267.
She said they are trying to work with the Graduate Students Association to “figure out what to do.” One option being considered is opening another emergency food service on campus targeted towards grad students.
“The unfortunate reality is that this food bank is small, we have one full-time staff member, and we're just not able to serve 300-plus individuals.”
As a result, they’ve had to ration what they can offer students by making some changes to the service.
“Which unfortunately included no longer serving dependents, and we’re only serving students” she said. “That was a difficult decision to make, because now we can no longer give people 90, 120 items per month based on how many people they have living in their household. But it has allowed us to stretch our budget and serve more students and allow people to get the items they want.”
She said people would come in with a family of six, take six cartons of milk, and then there would be none left for people coming in at the end of the day.
Wyllie attributed the increased need to the pandemic, soaring grocery prices and the high cost of tuition.
But housing costs are also a large contributor.
As of October, the average rental price for a one bedroom apartment in Guelph was $2,085. Even basement apartments are going for well over $1,000.
This is why Preia Grant, one of the students who relies on the food bank each month, commutes from out of town.
Grant is a mature student in the first year of an undergraduate in biological sciences. She lived in Kitchener for the first part of the school year, but is moving to Milton and commuting at least three times a week to the Guelph campus.
“I don’t have a choice. I can’t afford to live in a residence,” she said, adding the cost doesn’t include food, and they don’t have kitchens.
She said she has to move “constantly” because rent prices keep soaring past what she can afford.
Her rent is around $1,000 right now, and her tuition was around $1,877, which she has to pay upfront since she doesn’t qualify for OSAP.
She works part-time as well, clocking in around 20 hours of gruelling work at a chicken farm. But she said most of the money she makes there goes into her car to be able to commute to and from work and school.
Beyond her part-time income, she only gets $1,166 from ODSP.
“That has to come from somewhere; it comes out of my food budget," she said. "I’ve got to go to school. I have to eat enough to be awake for class,” she said.
Grant said being at university is her “only way of breaking out of poverty. I’m certainly not going to do it with the chicken job,” she said.
“I think the biggest frustration is that the stuff that I can afford is all freaking junk food. I can afford mac and cheese, but I can’t afford a bag of milk,” she said.
Grant said more truly affordable housing would have a significant impact on her, and other student's, food insecurity.
“I’d imagine it must be harder if you can’t speak the language or if you’re deaf or have a mental disability,” she said. “ I can at least go to work and do my part-time job. How the hell are they surviving?”
