The City of Kawartha Lakes, Ontario wears it’s muscular “city” hat on a largely rural area that other jurisdictions might be more inclined to call a region or county. As such, gathered and reported statistics have a useful flavour missing from more urban cities.
In Kawartha Lakes, studies on hunger and housing cannot fail to be underpinned by the cost of transportation. Except within the region’s towns, there is generally no easy stroll to a food bank trailing a shopping cart. Travel expenses subtract from not only the budget for necessities of life, including food, they also are an almost inevitably impact on employment, if any.
With the pandemic chasing many city-dwellers towards the countryside driving up rural housing costs, those struggling to survive in more rural areas may no longer be favoured by access to cheaper housing.
A press release from from Kawartha Lakes Food Source, as well as a Feed Ontario’s Hunger Report, detail some of the food stresses on low income citizens, caught in an ever tightening trap between increasing housing costs on one hand, and effectively shrinking social service payments on the other.
Read more in THE LINDSAY ADVOCATE: Root causes of local hunger made obvious by pandemic
