Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Community leader Dave Letele is to close his South Auckland foodbank, citing impossible conditions.
Letele runs a number of programmes in South and West Auckland through his business Buttabean Motivation.
He told Nine to Noon funding had not kept up with increased demand, and he had made the tough decision to close.
"We all know how tough things are," he said.
"People down at the bottom, there's more and more of them, there's more people, working class, middle class, all being pushed down, so demand on services like ours has just gone through the roof, but the funding is not there to match it."
Dave Letele to close foodbank in South Auckland
Letele said they had had good support from corporate and donations, but had to close the foodbank or risk the collapse of the rest of the business.
"I've been trying to just work through it but I just don't see any light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
"If I wasn't careful, it could bring down everything, all the other stuff we're doing too."
At its peak the foodbank was providing meals to 700 families, but in March it cut back to 200.
Letele said it cost roughly $1 million a year to run the business, which went towards the foodshare, social supermarket, leases, and everyday costs.
"We created this juggernaut, it's just so hard to keep going."
Letele said they would still provide their other services, but the foodshare could not be done.
The business runs programmes for education, upskilling and fitness.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was saddened to hear Letele was closing down his foodbank, but insisted the government was supporting people in hardship.
At the same time, she pointed to the government books which showed a deficit of $12.9 billion to the year ended June.
"The government invests significantly through the welfare system to make sure that those who are without jobs or income are supported by fellow New Zealanders. We also make hardship grants available for those who find themselves in particularly challenging circumstances, and we do provide a quantum of funding for food networks, for food banks, across the country," she said.
"The government should make those supports available, and it does. The question is always can all New Zealanders afford to keep increasing that rate investment in the way we have in recent years? The books today tell us it's now a time for very careful choices."
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the closure was another example of the government's "broad characterisation of government spending as 'wasteful' being totally and utterly wrong."
"Giving extra support to food banks at a time when Kiwis are facing a cost of living crisis wasn't wasteful spending - it was actually a sensible thing for the government to do to support some of our most vulnerable people through a really, really difficult time economically."
A Labour government would look to support vulnerable communities through the current economic climate by funding organisations like foodbanks, but this would be assessed year by year, he said.
The Green Party's social development spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March said food banks were a symptom of political choices by successive governments to not lift people out of poverty through increases to benefit levels or providing enough state housing.
"The experience Dave Letele and others are facing is the end result of families not being able to put food on the table because, for example, income support is simply not catching up with the cost of living. Food banks are never going to catch up to the reality that the families they're serving are living on private rentals that are too expensive or receiving incomes below the poverty line."
He accused the government of sitting on its hands and passing the buck to services that were struggling to survive.
Tāmaki Makaurau MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp from Te Pāti Māori said the closure was another attack from the government against whānau.
"This government has to do more for our people, they no longer care about families, they no longer care about feeding whānau."
She said Thursday was a "sad day" for the whānau of South Auckland, and that Letele had been providing an amazing service for people to get kai.
"Now with it closing, where are our whānau going to go?
"We need his service here in South Auckland. Our whānau are struggling."
Kemp said this was a trend across Auckland, with other foodbanks having to reduce their services.
"The Auckland City Mission fund the foodbank at Manurewa marae. They used to provide like 500 food packs a week and they've been reduced down to 20 a day."