Examining poverty in Surrey

Food Insecurity in Surrey: A Snapshot

We created this resoource to support the ongoing advocacy efforts of local organizations like Seeds of Change Surrey (SOCS) in addressing food insecurity and promoting food justice within the city.

Key Insights:

• In 2022, 21.6% (107,000) of Surrey residents reported experiencing food insecurity, up from 15.1% in 2018.

• Racialized residents face higher food insecurity rates (25%, or 79,000 people) compared to non-racialized and non-indigenous residents (16%, or 27,000 people).

• Young adults are more affected by food insecurity compared to other age groups.

• Single-parent households report significantly higher rates of food insecurity (41%) compared to two-parent families (18%).

Demographic trends in poverty for Surrey residents

In April 2024, the City of Surrey’s Housing and Social Development team reached out to the SFU REACH-Cities team to develop data visualizations that present poverty rates across different demographic groups in Surrey, with a specific emphasis on racialized poverty trends across generations.

In consultation with city staff, we used the Market Basket Measure (MBM) poverty measure and drew on data from the 2021 Canada Census of Population available through the Community Data Program, and the Canadian Income Survey (released in April 2024), which provides low-income statistics from tax filer data up to 2023 (tax year 2022) and Market Basket Measure component thresholds up to 2024 (tax year 2023). Additionally, we requested custom cross-tabulated data from Statistics Canada from the 2021 Canada Census of Population to analyze the prevalence of racialized poverty across generations.