Report: About 18 percent of Philadelphians are food insecure

Philadelphia is marking National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week with an unfortunate new statistic: At the same time hunger around the United States is decreasing, locally, it increased by 22 percent.

A report released Monday by Hunger Free America found that from 2015 to 2017, 18.3 percent of Philadelphians lived in food insecure households, compared to 16.7 percent from 2012 to 2014. That’s an increase from 248,046 people to 302,685 people who were “unable to always afford sufficient food.”

As Philly.com notes, Philly is bucking several national poverty trends. For one, the city’s poverty rate remains stuck at 25.7 percent, despite a national decline. And while technically the childhood poverty rate is going down, experts in the social services field say Philadelphia’s kids are no better off.

According to the report, it would cost about $158 million to end hunger in the city itself, and about $355 million to end it in the greater metropolitan area.