‘Poor Becoming Poorer’: South Auckland Foodbanks Warn Poverty Is Deepening Among Pasifika

Johnny
Blades RNZ Pacific senior journalist

People
running foodbanks in South Auckland say poverty is deepening
among the Pacific community, and the high demand they are
seeing is the just tip of the iceberg.

Persistent high
rents and basic living costs, plus nagging debt, continue to
leave Pasifika families facing tough decisions on whether to
pay bills or feed their children.

As New Zealand gets
ready to head to the polls, and the cost of living looms as
the biggest issue for voters, the government has been
touting its stewardship of the economy and signs of
recovery.

But it is a different picture at the
frontline of foodbanks such as Vinnies Tāmaki Makaurau –
based in Onehunga – which is part of the national
organisation of the Society of St Vincent de
Paul.

Households from the Pasifika and Māori
communities make up the majority of families who come to
their foodbank or to access budgeting support, counselling,
youth development or help with employment
pathways.

“We used to see people come once every three
months. Now we’re seeing people try and register with us and
apply every week, every fortnight, and we just wish we
weren’t the capability to do that,” Henry Elliot, a triage
coordinator and financial mentor with Vinnies,
said.

He
said while housing insecurity, chronic illness, disability,
mental health difficulties, domestic violence and other
factors contribute to food insecurity, Vinnies does not have
enough resources to meet the high demand.

The Onehunga
base had 31,000 engagements last year – that is, people
reaching out and getting responded to, either by phone, face
to face meetings, online engagement, workshops, sessions, or
programme participation.

Post-pandemic
deprivation

According to Elliot, Vinnies has seen the
level of need among Pasifika deepen since the Covid-19
pandemic.

“Covid brought the need up, and then when
Covid kind of disappeared, and we were supposed to go back
to normal lives, for lots of people their jobs were never
there again; they had no work.

“Some of them still
have no work, or they’re on part time, or their hours are
cut. So while Covid disappeared and the funding disappeared,
the need for food did not.”

Meanwhile, the government
this term introduced a host of sanctions on beneficiaries,
which he said had left a number of people in the Pacific
community needing help from Vinnies:

“Two three years
into those those new rules, we’re seeing the effects. People
are coming in unsure why their benefit was cut or why their
benefit was slashed altogether, and then finding out that
it’s because they missed a meeting, a conference, a phone
call, and those sanctions that are imposed on them happen
very quickly.”

A
new
survey by the New Zealand Food Network found that one in
every three households are struggling to provide affordable,
nutritious meals, with the burden falling heaviest on single
parents, Pacific communities, disabled people and
renters.

‘The gap is widening’

Vinnies Tāmaki
Makaurau general manager Delphina Soti said it is
increasingly clear that many Pasifika families are
struggling to afford basics.

“Like we understand that
the cost of living has gone up, inflation’s gone up, like
all sorts of different things have gone up, but what people
are getting paid is not going up,” Soti noted.

“So
it’s 9 percent that rent’s gone up, and then cost of living
– 5 percent. Then you look at income’ Work and Income, our
most vulnerable, 2.2 percent; and then you look at how much
the incomes have gone up, it’s like 4 percent.”

She
said that only around 16 percent of Pasifika in New Zealand
own homes, compared with 42.1 percent of all New Zealanders,
while around two-thirds of Pasifika are renting
homes.

“So if the rent is shooting through the clouds,
their income is coming down, and Work and Income is coming
down, what kind of planning is this as a
government?

‘The poor are becoming poorer, and the gap
is widening.”

This
is echoed Mangere Budgeting Services Trust CEO Lara Dolan,
who said in each of the past two financial years, her
organsation supported around 4,000 families with food
support and budgeting advice.

She said Pasifika made
up 60 percent of those people.

“The demand for our
services, financial mentoring services, has increased by 61
percent in the last two years, and the demand for food has
increased by more than 100 percent, which tells me that
people are struggling big time.”

Dolan said people
coming to them for help are often working people drowning in
debt and the high cost of living.

“Everything is
getting more expensive but salaries of peoplem are not
keeping upn with inflation.

“We see a lot of people
who are ‘working poor’, like teachers, builders, and health
care workers coming in.”

Barriers

Because
Vinnies does not offer food deliveries, people need to come
to them to get the food packages. But getting all the way to
Onehunga is too hard for some families.

Elliot said
another barrier is the shame some Pacific people feel about
reaching out for help.

“It’s that sense of shame or
whakamā. So we try and provide that safe space where it’s
as simple as going to a New World or a PAK’nSAVE, they don’t
have to feel like they’re coming to a charity.

“We
notice that when we give them the food, a small weight’s
lifted off their shoulders every time. Every time the person
puts food in their car or in their trolley or whatever, that
small weight is okay – ‘of all the problems I have in my
life right now, at least I know I’ve got a meal tonight, and
so do my kids.”

Soti said Vinnies is probably only
seeing about 50 percent of the families who are in need of
help.

“We’ve had people here who’ve struggled to come
here. We watch cars do ueys (u-turns). They keep on turning
around and going back until somebody goes. Henry goes out
and waves them down – ‘come’. and they come
trembling.

“They don’t want to ask, but they are
connected to a whole lot of other people who are doing it
tough as well. We reckon about 50 percent. We only see the
tip of the iceberg.”

Resilience

Vinnies gets
some funding from the Ministry of Social Development, and
then other funding from private sources and church
donations.

Soti said Vinnies is grateful government
support for its foodbanks, but it is nowhere near the level
they need.

However, the Pacific community has come to
the party as much as it can.

“Amidst all of this,
there’s so much hope. We ask our young people, hey, you can
be part of this food system, you can really make an impact,”
she explained.

“So they turn around and collect cans,
and they don’t just collect cans. They collect to the value
of $30,000 worth of cans,

Elliot said the sense of
community is strong within Pacific people, which gives them
resilience.

“I will say this: they’ve known struggle
and poverty their entire lives, especially if they’re from
New Zealand. So they know how to make it work if need be,”
he said.

“And while they may be shy to come to us
because we are a Pacific community, they do know that the
community will rally around people that need support in the
long run, whether that be through their church or their
village communities that operate here in New Zealand, or
their families in a wider context.”

Soti
said that in Aotearoa there is enough to go around – and
that no one should go hungry.

“I think there is
enough. You got people who’ve got billions, and then you’ve
got people with absolutely nothing, and so it’s just
thinking, coming back to human beings.

“Poverty seeps
in when we forget that we belong to each other on a really
human level. If we remember that, maybe it’s time to pull
some of those resources towards those who don’t have enough
of the
blanket.”

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