City Missioner Diane Robertson said the queue started at 1am on Monday after word got out on social media that Work and Income staff would be at the mission's Hobson St offices from this week to process applications for emergency help.
The mission gave out 125 food parcels on Monday, compared with 39 on the first day a similar pre-Christmas Work and Income service opened last year.
It closed when the queue reached 200 families on Tuesday, up from 160 on the second day last year, and expected to feed a further 200 families yesterday.
Ms Robertson said the mission did not advertise the service, but word got out through local Work and Income offices and spread through word of mouth and social media. Vanisa Samuel, 34, from Papatoetoe, saw it on a Facebook site called South Side Freebies.
Trudy Tapu, 25, grew up in Mangere and came last year and the year before. She now lives in Hamilton, but drove up to stay with her mum on Tuesday night and was in the queue by 6am yesterday.
"They don't have many places like this in Hamilton so it was worth my $20 gas to come here," she said.
All those who spoke to the Herald were on benefits, with no cash to spare for all the extra costs of Christmas. Eleanor Anaru, a 20-year-old solo mum cradling her 5-month-old son Te Kahurangi, pays $400 a week rent and usually has only $20-$40 a week for food. Her electricity is on a pre-paid card-operated system and has cut off five times this year when she had no cash to top up.
Ms Robertson said all the families first had to check their entitlements from Work and Income, which provides food grants in hardship cases of up to $450 in a half-year for families with one or two children or $550 for larger families.
"Eighty per cent still have some entitlement. That is often small, so we adjust what they get," Ms Robertson said. A family might have $40 left which Work and Income would load on to a payment card to be spent at specified supermarkets, and the mission would then give them a food parcel "but not necessarily the bread and milk or something like that".
Standard food parcels were prepared depending on the size of each family, valued at $65 for a family of four or $17 for a single person. Most included canned food, sausages, milk, bread, margarine and spreads, flour, rice, pasta, cereal, biscuits, teabags, sugar, fresh vegetables, one toilet roll, soap and shampoo.
From this week until Christmas, families that qualify for food parcels are also given gifts for the children.
Ms Robertson said the food and gifts were funded by donations. The mission gave out 11,349 food parcels in the past year and aims to raise $1.3 million in its Christmas appeal.
This year's household economic survey found there were 214,500 households (12.9 per cent of the total) who said their income was not enough to meet their needs. This was down from a peak of 295,200 households (18.5 per cent) in 2010.
By Simon Collins of The New Zealand Herald
