By Jeremy Cook
More families are using a free mobile soup kitchen in Warwick each week as cost of living pressures continue to impact the region.
For five years, the Warwick Community Van has served home-cooked meals each Sunday to those who would otherwise go without.
The van’s project manager Catherine Cazaly said she’d seen many different clients in that time, the demographics of which tend to come in waves.
For a while after Covid, Ms Cazaly said the van typically served more “singletons”, but that had started to change recently.
“Now we’re moving back towards a wave of families that really need that extra one meal cooked for their multiple kids,” she said.
“[It] just saves them that much money.”
Ms Cazaly estimated her group of volunteers served about 70 people on average each week.
“It ebbs and flows,” she said.
“We have our regulars that come every week regardless … and then there’s people that come for a little while and then the situation changes.”
From 1 July, every Australian taxpayer will have started receiving some sort of cost of living relief through either tax cuts and energy rebates.
Though housing continues to be a struggle for all parts of the country, including the Southern Downs.
Vacancy rates for rental properties have remained at near-record lows of 0.2 per cent in Warwick and 0.4 per cent in Stanthorpe, according to the latest data from property analysts SQM research.
In Warwick alone, median weekly rents have risen beyond record highs felt in March to a peak of $495 come the end of June.
Speaking in Queensland parliament in June, Southern Downs MP James Lister described housing availability as “dire”.
“I have people coming to see me saying, ‘I’m homeless. I’ve rented for 20 years. I have a job but I don’t have a home’,” he said.
“That is really difficult to see.”
At the Warwick Commmunity Van, Ms Cazaly said what volunteers saw most of is “people who need connection”.
“Coming to the van gives people the opportunity just to connect and say, for tonight, I’m just like everybody else,” she said.
“And I think that’s what people really enjoy about the van.”
