More than food banks: Use of meal services points to growing food insecurity in Niagara

Poverty-fighting advocates have long been raising the alarm over the rising number of people relying on food banks to meet their nutritional needs.

Yet there’s another, often overlooked avenue people are turning to as Niagara faces a growing food insecurity crisis, largely spawned by housing unaffordability.

A policy brief released by the Brock University Niagara Community Observatory examines the various agencies — many of them faith based — that are doing the work of providing cooked, nutritional meals for people unable to do so themselves.

In the brief Increasing Hunger in Niagara: The Need for Action, Joanne Heritz, adjunct professor of political science at Brock, shows how food insecurity is more pervasive in the region than many people realize, in part because previous measures we