Group also seeks to assist church that provides space

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The Bluffs is not just a food bank any longer.

Over five years, the volunteer operation that now feeds 260 families a week in southwest Scarborough has added used clothing, tax help, an Internet cafe, a shower and other free services as it's grown in the basement of a Birch Cliff church.

Now, it must try to help that same church, Birchcliff Bluffs United, whose members gave it a home and have been so generous with their money and time.

Two years ago, the congregation, the Ontario Trillium Foundation and local businesses paid for $900,000 worth of renovations.

But the building near Kingston Road and Warden Avenue needs $200,000 more to fix its crumbling front steps and to replace or repair four flat roofs where water is leaking and damaging the walls.

"If it wasn't for the church, we wouldn't be here," Gail Barkic, The Bluffs volunteer co-ordinator said this week while preparing for the weekly Thursday rush of families and singles.

Several of The Bluffs' 80 volunteers, some arriving by 6 a.m., had finished stocking one food delivery on Wednesday and were preparing for another.

The renovations created a new basement doorway and entrance ramp - previously, volunteers had to carry food up the church steps and down a flight - and paid for a new kitchen, new flooring and windows, air conditioners and other appliances.

But there were $100,000 in unexpected costs for asbestos removal and to fill a large sinkhole found under the kitchen floor.

Four other area churches help support the food bank operations but Barkic said she fears the Birchcliff Bluffs congregation is too small to handle the latest costs by itself.

The Bluffs fed 24 families when it first opened. In the last year, Barkic said, the clientele has changed dramatically, with more single people who are "couch surfing" and many in limbo because of addiction and mental health issues.

Volunteers started offering free tax help, she said, when they noticed families didn't have their child tax credit because they hadn't done their taxes.

There are rows of plastic chairs where people can be served soup and sandwiches while they wait for their groceries.

The Bluffs has become "a port in the storm" said Michael Rosenberg, a volunteer who set up the Internet cafe with donated computers six months ago, "where people can rest, eat and get back a bit of their humanity."

Food banks across the province have undergone an evolution over the last decade, filling the huge gap in services left by governments as poverty increased, Ontario Association of Food Banks executive director Adam Spence said this week.

Some 94 per cent of food banks now provide community service information or referrals, 57 per cent offer clothing and 45 per cent low-cost or free furniture, according to a survey of OAFB's 120 members last month.

But with 320,000 turning to food banks in Ontario every month, it's time for federal and provincial governments to assume much more responsibility for fighting poverty, said Spence, whose group delivered a report to the province this week on how to cut the poverty rate in half by 2020.

Not that volunteers reaching out at the local level aren't needed too, he said.

"Everyone needs their shovel in the ground, particularly now."

A spike in thefts and prostitution set Birch Cliff residents on edge this year. Lee Kubota, a grandmother who's been volunteering at The Bluffs for two years, offered advice on how to turn things around.

"Neighbourhood involvement would be an excellent place to start. If you're in a neighbourhood, everything that happens is your problem, it's your business," she said.

Kubota said she'd like the province, formulating an anti-poverty strategy this year, to know, "I think it's terrible that we need food banks" and that providing adequate support for the needy is a responsibility "they're not living up to," she said.

"In the meantime, until they come forward, we'll be here."