Bare shelves are becoming a common occurrence at Neighbour to Neighbour Centre.

Snezana Jevtic is worried.

The director of family services at Neighbour to Neighbour Centre on Athens Street is worried the growing demand for food bank services will eat up their rapidly diminishing supply. She's worried a slowing economy and higher prices for food will exacerbate the decline they've already seen in food donations and she's worried higher gasoline prices might mean some of their dedicated volunteers may choose not to help out quite as often.

"This is the worst year in terms of (empty shelves in the food bank)," said Ms. Jevtic, who noted donations traditionally drop off during the summer when schools are out and donors are on vacation.

However this year, Ms. Jevtic noted, the drop in donations began in the spring.

"This year, even in April or before that, we started seeing a sudden and quite a drop in terms of what we're able to put on our shelves and it's still continuing," she said.

With demand approaching 1,000 households per month, up from about 850 a year ago, food is disappearing off the food bank shelves far faster than donations are coming in.

The problem has become so acute that many food bank clients are leaving with about half the amount of food they would normally be entitled to because there aren't enough food and toiletry items or Neighbour to Neighbour Centre has had to put restrictions on certain items due to short supply.

For instance, a month ago food bank clients were entitled to eight packages of hot cereal for a point. Now they are restricted to four packages for a point. Food bank clients are given a certain number of points they can use based on household size. At press time the food bank had run out of juice and toilet paper.

Other items that are desperately needed include rice, beans, cereal, baby food, diapers, pasta, pasta sauce, canned vegetables, bottled water and toiletries.

"We're hearing more frustration (from food bank clients) because they can't seem to find what they're looking for and they can't fill their points," Ms. Jevtic said. "When you have your shelves bare as we do now, there's not a lot of choice (for our clients)."

Ms. Jevtic said when word got out in May about a looming crisis at Neighbour to Neighbour Centre and other city food banks, more donations came in, but they were not enough to keep the shelves stocked for long.

Neighbour to Neighbour Centre typically spends about $5,000 each summer to buy food to keep items on the shelves during the traditional slow donation period, but with the jump in the cost of food over the past several months, that amount purchases about three quarters the amount of food it did last summer.

Ms. Jevtic agreed they literally need thousands of pounds of donated food to offer the same food bank service they were providing a year ago.

Most of the food bank clients are single mothers with children, either the working poor or receiving some sort of social assistance.

That fact has not escaped Mark Fraser, a senior social planner at the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton.

He noted the working poor and those eking out a living on social assistance are very much a part of the Mountain social-economic structure, although they may be more hidden than they are in other parts of the city.

"You can clearly see pockets of poverty across the Mountain," Mr. Fraser said. "There are some Mountain neighbourhoods with poverty rates as high as 28 percent."

Mr. Fraser's information comes from 2001 census data from Statistics Canada. He hopes to be able to get updated numbers about the poverty situation on the Mountain from the 2006 census later this year.

A recent report by the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto revealed that food bank clients in the GTA spend about 77 percent of their income on housing, which leaves little money available for food.

Neighbour to Neighbour Centre accepts food and monetary donations 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday at 28 Athens Street. For more information call 905-574-1334.