Food Bank Use Prior to Homelessness

Food provided by a food bank is a close substitute for food purchased in a retail store. This characteristic of food bank services means that threats to one’s ability to maintain housing – increased rents, job loss, inadequate income supports, high prices generally – can be expected to result in growing reliance on food banks. This policy brief derives, presents, and evaluates preliminary results from an ongoing study of how individuals and families respond to shocks to their budgets that present challenges to their ability to maintain housing. We hypothesize that such a shock sets in motion an effort by a household to conserve income for the payment of rent and so a coincident increase in its use of food banks. By linking administrative datasets reporting food bank use and entry into homeless shelters by uniquely identified people, we show how reliance on food banks increases as individuals and families near the date when housing is lost. This research has the potential for identifying periods of intervention that may prevent homelessness.