Stay-at-home mother Glenda Pontes has been visiting the Addi Road food pantry in Sydney's inner-west for years to purchase snacks at a low price.
Now she has to rely on the charity to put all food on the table.
"I'm finding that I have to come here to get the things to make dinner and school meals," she said.
"We've just got one income at home, so we need to survive on that."
Ms Pontes said her partner's income was chewed up on mortgage repayments and high inflation, and consecutive interest rate hikes had forced them to tighten their budget.
"We have to pay for all the necessities, after that there's not much left so I really have to watch what we buy," she said.
The Marrickville-based charity operates a food pantry every weekday where people can purchase groceries at drastically discounted prices or for free if needed.
Those who spend more than $5 also get free fruit, vegetables and bread.
Addi Road CEO Rosanna Barbero said demand for the charity's services had grown by more than 60 per cent in less than a year and the organisation was struggling to keep up as it relied solely on donations.
"We are getting no government funding," she said.
"It's very difficult for us because being at the coalface, when people come knocking at your door and tell you they're hungry, you can't turn them away.
"I've been with this organisation now for 11 years and I've never seen it this bad."
Ms Barbero said a new cohort of people were seeking food relief during the cost-of-living crisis.
"We're seeing everybody across the board … people that have suffered from rental hikes, mortgage hikes," she said.
"We're really entering into a crisis in the lower middle class and the middle class … that is frightening."
Charities 'turning away people' due to lack of resources
New research by one of the country's largest food relief organisations, OzHarvest, has found almost half of the charities it supports cannot meet the demand for food relief.
The survey of 1,900 charities found 73 per cent have reported an increase in demand in the past six months and more than a third of their clients were seeking food relief for the first time.
OzHarvest CEO Ronni Kahn said it was disappointing the food relief sector missed out on critical funding in the federal budget.
"The charities that we do deliver to are telling us that they could take another 50 per cent of the food if we had it to give them, so they most definitely are turning away people," she said.
"It is devastating that despite the record increase in demand for food, the government couldn't find any money in the budget to assist the sector to expand its work so less people go to bed hungry."
In the Western Sydney suburb of Clyde, Ararat Ghookassian is among hundreds of people who have braved the rain and lined up to collect food hampers from the charity, Turbans 4 Australia.
Mr Ghookassian is on the aged pension and is a carer for his wife, who is ill.
"I have a unit with a heavy mortgage to pay," he said.
"The prices are so high … we are struggling to make ends meet."
Turbans 4 Australia founder Amar Singh said the charity was stretched, with about 400 people collecting hampers from its Western Sydney office every week.
"It's really affecting the charity … since the COVID lockdown ended, we haven't seen any funding support from the government," he said.
"We are just relying on donations from members of the public to keep these programs going."
This week's federal budget included an increase of $40 per fortnight to JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and Austudy payments, while the age threshold for the higher JobSeeker rate was lowered to 55 years old.
The food relief sector requested an annual federal government commitment of $45 million to ensure food relief was available to those experiencing food insecurity all year round.
While Ms Kahn welcomed the boost in welfare payments, she said it would do little to help charities.
"The [government] did not meet our demands. We asked and we have not been given," she said.
"Food insecurity is a problem that is not going to go away quickly.
"It needs an enormous amount of investment, time and energy to fix this challenge."
