More residents living in Toronto’s suburbs are having a hard time putting food on the table, turning to food banks in record numbers.

Visits to food banks in Peel, Durham and York regions have increased nearly 20 per cent since the start of the 2008 recession, according to new data from the Daily Bread Food Bank, Toronto’s largest network of food relief agencies.

In 2008 there were 152,700 visits to a 905-area food bank; that number increased to 182,500 visits in 2013.

Food bank officials say demand is going up because low-income families can’t afford to live in downtown Toronto and they’re migrating to more affordable areas of the Greater Toronto Area. A combination of low-paying part-time jobs and high rents are forcing low-income families to move outside the City of Toronto.

Gail Nyberg, executive director of the Daily Bread Food Bank, said many educated, middle-class Canadians who previously did not use food banks contributed to the spike in 2008 after they lost their jobs.

Many of those people have found work since, but not at the full-time, $50,000-per year level they were earning before.

“They may have had a manufacturing job and they now have a service sector job but that's not cutting it,” said Nyberg.

Rising downtown rents

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto is $1,682 per month, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board.

"At 10.25 an hour, do the math, even if you got 40 hours a week, once you’ve paid Mr. Harper and Ms. Wynne, there's not really enough money to pay your rent and feed yourself," Nyberg said.

Helen Choi, marketing co-ordinator at the Yonge Street Mission, said there has recently been a spike in visits to their food bank due to the high cost of living in Toronto.

“An Ontario Works recipient is left with $100 to feed their family after spending $900-$,1000 on a one-bedroom apartment,” Choi said.

Rising food bank demand presents a troubling picture of the city’s growing poverty, but Valerie Tarasuk, a University of Toronto nutritional sciences professor who studies hunger, said food bank numbers merely scratch at the surface of Canada’s hunger problem.

Tarasuk was the lead researcher on the Household Food Insecurity in Canada report, released in February, which found that four million Canadians do not have access to sufficient, healthy food.

She said most Canadians who experience food insecurity do not even use a food bank.

"There's a huge amount of diversity among food banks in terms of the criteria they apply to determine who is eligible for their help, how often they're open, how often you can go to them," Tarasuk said.

Food banks use different rules and distinctions as a means of rationing the small amount of supplies that they have relative to the high demand, she said.

Limited access

Many food banks are only open during day-time, week-day hours, meaning that people who are employed but unable to make ends meet cannot have access to their services. Some food banks also exclude people who have a job altogether.

These hurdles and distinctions apply critically to the suburbs, where 39 per cent of food bank clients have at least one employed person in their household, according to a 2014 Daily Bread survey.

Tarasuk also said there is a cultural stigma attached to using a food bank.

“People came back saying, ‘It’s not for me. I’m not that desperate,’” Tarasuk said.

But even if there are thousands more people in the suburbs who would benefit from access to a food bank if they could get it or felt they needed it, food relief agencies across the GTA are already struggling to meet demand.

Total client visits to food banks in the City of Toronto and surrounding suburbs increased from 952,000 in 2008 to 1,120,000 in 2013.