Some of Auckland's largest foodbanks are warning they may need to close or significantly reduce food parcels after the government indicated it will not fund them next year.
It comes as many working households still struggle to put food on the table after a year of rising unemployment, while a predicted economic recovery is still many months away.
Auckland City Mission got a one-off government grant to continue its food bank services until the end of the year and is now wondering what comes next.
City Missioner Helen Robinson said it had asked the coalition government for annual funding so it could keep providing 50,000 food parcels in 2025 - but that looked unlikely.
"I'm worried. I know hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders rely on the mission for food and I know what it means when people don't have enough food."
Auckland City Missioner Helen Robinson. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The government funds a food distribution network which collects surplus food from growers and wholesalers and delivers it to food hubs - although that money is due to end in July 2025.
Robinson said state agencies referred people to food banks but did not fund them.
"When the government funding stopped we publicly went out and said we would have to reduce the number of food parcels from 50,000 a year to 20,000 a year and that message still stands. WIthout any government support in any one year that is what we'll have to be reduced to."
Several Auckland foodbanks made public pleas this year for urgent donations.
The Buttabean Motivation Foodbank, which feeds up to 200 Auckland families on a weekly basis, received close to $200,000 after making a public plea for funding. It faced closure because demand had outstripped resources.
On the North Shore, the Good Works Trust got enough to keep its school lunch packs going until term two next year.
It gets referrals from the city mission, state agencies and charities supporting people in need.
Good Works Trust operations manager Sophie Gray. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The trust's operations manager Sophie Gray said the money had not kept up with demand.
"The vulnerable clients that we're working with have less available to them in terms of support from [the Ministry of Social Development] and the foodbanks have less support in terms of also supplying them. So those two things have happened at the same time ... it's been a major shakedown."
Gray is also calling for the government to provide ongoing funding for foodbanks.
"Some funding and some recognition of the fact that our organisation and others like us are actually doing the government's job. We are doing social change."
She said foodbanks receive some grants from charities but this is increasingly competitive and the money has to be spent on rent or staff, not food.
"If we can't find the funding then we will join the ranks of the ... many other foodbanks around the country, I know of four at least that have closed in the last six months."
Presbyterian Northern Support runs a food parcel service in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill, Communities Feeding Communities.
When working people could not afford food, the system was broken, interim chief executive Pam Elgar said.
"We are in a cycle where foodbanks are a thing to stay. I'm somewhat shattered by a New Zealand today that has people sitting on the street asking for money and turning up as regulars because they don't have the basics looked after."
Non-profit organisations needed to be funded if the social welfare system was sending clients to them, Elgar said.
The Ministry of Social Development said foodbanks started to receive direct government funding in 2020 during the pandemic.
Since then, the government had invested more than $200 million in the sector, both directly to foodbanks as well as to a food distribution network.
Auckland City Mission had received $5.2m since 2020, and a food security initiative grant of $100,000, while Good Works Charitable Trust received $373,840, the ministry said.
The food security funding had been extended with one-off grants to 13 providers this year.
But that was time-limited funding that the government did not intend to extend past this year, Minister of Social Development Louise Upston said.
"It's really challenging at the moment because we do know that households are doing it tough, which is why we extended it this year.
"The intention going forward is that we will focus on the infrastructure which supports multiple foodbanks to be able to be more effective in the work that they do."
Minister of Social Development Louise Upston. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
That included funding the New Zealand Food Network, which distributes surplus food to community providers, and funding food storage.
Foodbanks did not receive direct government funding before Covid-19, Upston said.
"If we're serious, which we are, about dealing with the cost of living crisis we have to pull government spending back and one of the opportunities is to end the things that were created just for Covid."
Meanwhile, those providing food said they were struggling to keep up with existing demand.
It had become a regular occurrence for people in need to drop into Presbyterian Support Northern's head office, but it did not distribute food parcels from there, Elgar said.
"What our staff do is raid the staff refrigerator and try to provide whatever we've got so that we can send them away at least with something and enable them to get to the food service if they possibly can."
The City Mission was already giving out food parcels to whoever was first and was loath to have to turn people away, Robinson said.
"Usually it is very honestly a first in first served [system] because I don't have an ability to measure hunger. This is madness and tragic and totally unnecessary. As a country, as a government, we can choose to prior the needs of those who don't have enough money for food."
That could include funding for food relief agencies and policy change such as allowing people on a benefit to earn more before their benefit was cut, she said.
"We would ask for that abatement rate to be increased so that people can earn more money in paid employment and then not have less."
The North Shore has the highest median rental price in the country but Gray said the people struggling were a diverse group.
Some were out of work, while others were social housing tenants or receiving mental health care, she said.
"There is not a single pocket of the North Shore that doesn't have people going through the worst week of their life."
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