Real economic “squeeze” impacts on lower paid, sick

Real people in real need coming for help to The Social Crust exposes for everyone to see that there is a significant “hole” in the social safety net that this society believes already catches the needy.

May and Peter Croft insist there are structural issues within the society which mean that until the government and people sort them out, the food bank is an interim back-up for the people who in most cases work and just don’t get enough financial reward. 

“That’s a combination of short hours … of 30 hours a week or whatever … they just don’t have enough money after they’ve paid the rent, run the car _ and food becomes kind of an optional thing,” Peter Croft said.

“The other problem (contributing to food need) is people who become sick. 

“Have an accident and break your leg, our system is very good, ACC – 80 percent of your wages gets paid. 

“(But) if you get cancer, you get sickness benefit _ your income may be a half or a quarter, but you’ve still got a house with a mortgage,” he noted.

“So what do you do? According to the system you’ve got to sell your house and become poor.

“So we step in and say no, we’ll help you to the extent we can for as long as you need it and get your job back.

“We help people through a year or 18 months till they’ve got their job back and they no longer need support from the Food Bank,” he said

The couple said that Martinborough responds well to some of the desperate need which is emerging.

“It is an incredibly generous community, just incredibly generous, said May Croft. “ And now that Greytown has come on board, it looks like their community is just as generous.”

Peter Croft said community generosity means “no-one in New Zealand is going to starve, they’re not going to die of hunger. 

“But because they lack the money to buy decent food on a regular basis, they’re eating rubbish, and their dignity goes out the window because they can’t afford anything else.”

May Croft said the group’s approach has a simple focus: 

“If you want to join this Food Bank or join the volunteers, you have to share the philosophy _ and the philosophy is you respect and value people. 

“That’s the starting point. Don’t come with a pre-conceived idea that these people are down and out, are no good or wasting their money,” she notes.

Another group using the food bank when the times are tough are itinerant workers who come into the area for seasonal work.

“Of course if they don’t work they don’t get paid, so they learn about the food bank, said Peter Croft. “There’s quite a bit of that (no work – no pay) in Martinborough, there really is.”

“So it rains and they have to come in and get a (food) box. The sun comes out, they work. So they understand and they are completely honest about how they treat the (food bank) system.”

May Croft added: “ We have one couple who pay for (using) the kitchen and bathroom (at one property) and they live in their car.” 

Q: Do they have a room?

May Croft: “No. They (the other tenants) pay a lot to live there. There’s a lot of things like that” in Martinborough’s itinerant worker community.

With the group’s newly-found warehouse premises has come several new opportunities.

The first, which is planned to open next month, is a furniture and homewares second-hand shop.

Opening the shop is an effort “to develop an income stream to give ourselves more stability, given the expectation it (the food bank) will continue,” she said.

Peter Croft adds: “We’re not just saying to the community please keep giving, it’s really important. But we’re trying to (also) help ourselves, we’re not just sitting there with our hand out. We’re going to run this shop which hopefully will give us some money. We are doing our best to help ourselves.”

The group is also moving into support and advocacy roles.

“We want to train some of our volunteers in budget advising because we think it’s easy to get alongside people if they trust you. So … they trust us and we trust them and from that relationship we could easily be saying there’s someone here to have a chat about budgeting if you’d like,” said May Croft.

With volunteers from places like the banking system, the group has people who “could easily give that (budgeting) advice. We also do quite a bit of advocacy for people,” ensuring people get entitlements, even filling forms or registering the dog.

“The systems are so difficult for people to get through, they give up. So we think we could be there with them so they don’t just give up,” she said.  

Peter Croft added: “We can walk alongside them and help. They have to make the appointment but we can go along with them because we’re probably a little bit better placed to know what to ask. 

“It’s not the bureaucracy being difficult but they’re just coming at it from an entirely different perspective.”

Said May Croft: “In most of these cases, people simply don’t know what to do.” 

The pair are convinced by their four years of food bank work that the “food box” model not only helps fill an essential gap in the social welfare system, but that it isn’t going away any-time soon. 

But that reality has not altered their long-term goal.

“Our primary objective is that we are no longer needed.”