Officials at the NDG Food Depot say there's been a dramatic spike in the number of seniors it serves in just the past two years.
Bonnie Soutar with the NDG Food Depot suggests that since 2015, there's been an 85 per cent increase in the number of calls and visits from those 65 years of age and over.
"This is kind of heartbreaking," Soutar says. "Since 2015, we've had an increase in the number of people 65 and over coming in for emergency food or calling in for emergency food help delivered because of mobility issues."
Many of those seniors, she says, are on fixed incomes, and having to deal with slowly increasing costs of things like housing and medication which isn't covered — which means many are slipping below the poverty line.
"A lot of people aren't able to manage for themselves, they're not that independent, so they really need people to watch out for them," she says. "And it's really hard to find money for seniors' issues. People forget about seniors in our population."
Beginning on Oct. 2, the N.D.G. Food Depot will have a new home base — on Somerled Ave. in the Fielding-Walkley neighborhood, a neighborhood where as many as one in four families lives below the poverty line.