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In Kanata-Carleton and Nepean, two out of every 100 residents visited a food bank, the same as the primarily rural ridings of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell and Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke.

In Orléans, three out of 100 residents had accessed a food bank in 2018, and four out of 100 in Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. It was five out of 100 in Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston.

Wilson believes the lack of affordable housing is one of the key factors behind food bank demand. About 57 per cent of residents in Ottawa-Vanier are renters, for example, and rental units are expensive and hard to find. There are about 10,000 names on the writing list for subsidized housing in Ottawa.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia

According to the Ottawa Food Bank, a family of four with one minimum wage earner spent $1,568 a month on housing last year and $868 for food. A single adult receiving $1,251 under the Ontario Disability Support Program would spend $1,023 on rent and $244 on food, leaving a $16 deficit.

The Ottawa Food Bank has a $14 million budget, but only 2.5 percent of that comes from city coffers, with the rest coming from donations, said Wilson.

Food bank use exploded in 2008 after the recession struck. The number of food banks and clients have increased by almost 30 per cent since then.

“Fundamentally, it comes down to people not being able to pay for their basic necessities,” said Amanda King, interim executive director at Feed Ontario, which recently changed its name from from the Ontario Association of Food Banks. Feed Ontario’s network includes 130 direct food banks and about 1,100 hunger relief agencies.

“The cost of housing is skyrocketing. The cost of living increases. It makes it hard to make tight budgets balance,” said King. “We always knew that hunger touched every part of the province. This map shows it.”

Across the province, there was a 1.2 per cent increase in the number of unique visitors at food banks in the past year, but a three per cent increase in the number of visits.

Most of the Ottawa Food Bank’s agencies are seeing very little increase in demand this year, said Wilson. “It’s good that numbers aren’t increasing. But they’re not going down, either.”