Source: Radio New Zealand
Victoria University of Wellington Students Association president Aidan Donoghue displays empty boxes at the association’s foodbank. SUPPLIED
Student association leaders warn more students are struggling to make ends meet and rising prices will make the problem worse.
Victoria University’s student association says its food bank shelves are being cleaned out every week, AUT’s association says international students are especially hard hit, and Lincoln University’s association says demand for financial assistance has remained high since the pandemic began in 2020.
Their comments accompanied the launch of a study that found a marked increase in student hardship across several universities in the past five years.
The report by an Otago University student during an internship with the Green Party said there had been sustained growth in the use of foodbanks and hardship grants at several universities since 2019.
It said numbers were highest during the height of the pandemic in 2020, but remained above pre-pandemic levels last year.
The report said international students, single parents and female students were more likely to seek help for food insecurity.
It said the the number of students using a foodbank at AUT jumped from about 100 in 2020 to more than 1800 last year, about three-quarters of them foreign students.
At Victoria University, the student association’s spending on its food bank jumped from about $7000 in 2019 to more than $13,000 last year.
The report said Otago University Students Association provided about 250 food bags in 2019 and nearly 700 last year.
The three associations awarded on average $20,000 each in hardship grants last year, less than at the height of the pandemic but about double the figure in 2019.
The report’s author Anika Texley said the students’ associations collected different data about student hardship, but the overall picture was of growing demand for help.
“They’re struggling to meet their needs and their most basic needs. So things like rent tend to be prioritized over groceries,” she said.
Texley said students were struggling with rising expenses across the board.
“It’s not just groceries, it’s also bills, rising utility, rent is going up, and it’s consistently going up. So it’s an ongoing issue,” she said.
Texley completed her report while working as an intern for Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez.
He said students had been struggling for years and the report showed that the situation had worsened.
“And sadly, things are only going to get worse with the war ongoing in Iran. The cost of everything, gas, energy, groceries, rents, will spike up even further,” he said.
Hernandez said all students should be eligible for an allowance, rather than having to borrow for living costs through the student loan system.
The cupboard is bare
Victoria University of Wellington Students Association president Aidan Donoghue said its foodbank cupboards had been cleared out by hungry students.
“This Monday we had an order to completely fill out that food bank and it’s completely gone already,” he said.
“We’ve seen an increase of us having to order from roughly once every fortnight to once every week to now twice a week.”
Donoghue said the association received about $10,000 a year from the university to stock the foodbank and it would need double that sum to keep up with demand.
He said the fund ran out before the end of the year in 2025 and this year it has cut back on non-food items.
“We’ve had to cut all of our non-food expenditure. We’ve really just had to keep it to the basics of rice, pasta, food in cans,” he said.
“There’s no more toilet paper, there’s no more toothpaste, there’s no more deodorant, because all that costs far too much, and we need to stretch the food bank as far as it will go.”
Donoghue said about 100 students a week were visiting the food bank and many more students were struggling to pay their bills.
“Students are facing the toughest time they’ve had in years when it comes to just meeting the basics of rent, power, public transport,” he said.
He said students could receive up to $320 for living costs from the student loan scheme or as a student allowance if they qualified but needed roughly a further $100-200 to make ends meet.
AUT student association president James Portegys told RNZ students were coming every day for food vouchers or food bank packs and rising prices were making the situation worse.
“Obviously, the prices were already high, and now they’re increasing, so it’s quite a few students are now struggling,” he said.
Portegys said last year some students stopped coming to university because they could not afford the bus fare and the association successfully campaigned for discounted fares for students.
“We heard evidence of students choosing between paying rent, eating, or coming to campus. And what are you going to do? You’re going to choose to pay your rent and eat food,” he said.
Lincoln University students association president Zara Weissenstein told RNZ
“We had a huge increase in all of our financial assistance fund applications during COVID-19, of course and that consistently stayed quite high,” she said.
Weissenstein said the university ran a food bank and the association had noted an increase in students attending events with free food.
“Food is a really big thing because that’s often the first thing that students won’t prioritise because you have to prioritise your general expenses first, so your rent and your utilities that happen every month,” she said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand