Urgent: Community-Based Housing and Homelessness Funding

This is a letter from 27 organizations in communities across Ontario.

Dear Premier Wynne, Minister Jeffrey, Minister Piruzza, and Minister McMeekin,

We are writing as a coalition of concerned organizations to urge you to respond without delay to the growing crisis in housing and homelessness across Ontario. While there are many housing needs across the province, we need your government to commit – as quickly as possible and before the new year – to make permanent $42 million in “transition funding” for critically important housing and homelessness funds administered by municipalities under the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative (CHPI).

Municipalities across Ontario are in the midst of planning their budgets for the coming year. Decisions about housing and homelessness funding will be made very soon. Municipalities – and the low income Ontarians who live in them – need your guarantee that you are on their side.

Municipalities have been given the responsibility and flexibility to respond to their communities’ housing and homelessness issues through CHPI. But they can’t adequately respond to the need in their communities if the funds are not there to do the job.

When the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB) was eliminated from social assistance beginning in January 2013, only half of previously designated funds ($67 million in 2013-14) were transferred to CMSMs and DSSABs, using a formula that didn’t respond to real time housing needs.

Some municipalities responded to the loss of CSUMB by creating their own, similar funds to provide direct funding for first and last month’s rent, rental and utilities arrears, and other costs that ensure people are able to become housed or stay in their homes. Eligibility criteria and funded costs vary across the province, as do amounts of funding provided. Some municipalities did not create their own locally administered funds, so low income Ontarians in those communities have no source of direct support.

In December 2012, government responded to community concern by instituting a onetime $42 million “transition fund” to help municipalities deal with the loss of CSUMB and the move to community-based homelessness prevention. Those funds run out in March 2014.

In some areas of the province, designated funds for this purpose may have been underspent. This does not indicate a lack of need in communities, but rather the reality that the roll-out of the transition to CHPI funding was plagued with difficulties, resulting in many low income people either not attempting to access or being denied direct funding for their housing and homelessness-related needs. The transition to CHPI funding was also complicated by the new cap put on discretionary benefits. More funding is required for municipalities to find the right balance to provide for the need in their communities, and for low income Ontarians to become aware of funds that might be available.

While the $42 million will not replace CSUMB, it will go some way to ensuring that low income people in communities across Ontario will have the funds they need to secure housing and to prevent losing their housing, due directly to lack of income. The ripple effects of the devastating loss of CSUMB continue to be felt across the province. Low income Ontarians need your government’s guarantee that funds they need to get housing or stay housed will be there when they need them. The least they deserve is to have the additional $42 million in transition funding made permanently available to municipalities.

—————-

Contact:

Jennefer Laidley
Research & Policy Analyst
Income Security Advocacy Centre

425 Adelaide Street West, 5th Floor
Toronto, Ontario   M5V 3C1

ISAC website: www.incomesecurity.org
Social Assistance Review website: www.sareview.ca

Phone: 416-597-5820 x 5155
Fax: 416-597-5821
Email: laidleyj@lao.on.ca

Ontario Government proposes more Poverty Reduction consultations; community groups say it’s time for Premier Wynne to act

Five years after Ontario’s Liberal Government announced a Poverty Reduction Strategy, hundreds of thousands of people still don’t have enough money to pay their rent and buy their food. Food bank usage in Ontario is at record levels – rising from 374,000 people per month in 2008 to 413,000 in 2012, including 160,000 children.[1]

Despite holding multiple consultations about poverty reduction and social assistance reform, the Liberal Government has consistently ignored thousands of community members:

• In the spring and summer of 2008, more than 75 community consultations on poverty reduction were held across Ontario, including 44 with MPPs.[2] Community representatives consistently delivered the message that livable incomes and a minimum wage to raise a full-time, full-year worker out of poverty were critical to poverty reduction. The Liberal Government of Premier McGuinty ignored this input.
• In late 2008, people in communities across Ontario urged the government to set a target for poverty reduction in general – not just child poverty. Children live in families, they pointed out, and reducing overall poverty will inevitably help children. This message was ignored, and the government’s target of lifting 90,000 children out of poverty is short by 48,000 as of 2011.[3]
• In 2011 and 2012, four out of five community briefs to the Commission on Social Assistance Reform argued that adequate social assistance rates was a primary issue.[4] The final report of Commissioners Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh recommended an immediate rate increase of $100/month. The Liberal government of Premier Wynne was deaf to its own commissioners: the 2013 budget increased social assistance to recipients of Ontario Works benefits by only $14/month.

Dalton McGuinty’s last act as Premier was to cut the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit, which further worsened the destitution of Ontario’s most vulnerable.

Now, after five years of the Liberal Government failing to deliver on social assistance reform, it lacks credibility to call for more consultation in the absence of action on what the community has recommended to date.

We believe Premier Wynne does not need any further consultation to reduce poverty in Ontario. The Liberal government can respond now to the core demands that people from communities across Ontario have been making for five years. Our participation in any consultations on a new poverty reduction strategy will be to assert three core demands.

Our Demands

Premier Wynne government can reduce poverty and demonstrate her commitment to social justice by acting on the following:

1. Raise the rates

• Immediately increase the base rate of social assistance by $100 a month without paying for it by cutting other benefits.
• Restore the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit.

2. Protect  the well-being of people with disabilities

• Discuss the Commission on Social Assistance Reform recommendations regarding ODSP with community advocacy groups representing people with disabilities.

3. Reduce poverty for everyone

• Raise the minimum wage now to 10% above the poverty line.
• Set targets that reduce and eventually end poverty for everyone – children, families and communities.

Commitment to Social Justice

We are committed to social justice for people in Ontario who live in poverty. We will not stop until poverty is ended.

A social justice strategy to end poverty requires providing people with enough money for food, housing and everything else that ensures a life of health and dignity.

It is time for Premier Wynne to demonstrate her commitment to social justice with constructive social and economic policies. She can begin by acting on our three demands.

For further information, contact:
Peter Clutterbuck, Poverty Free Ontario
(416) 653-7947
pclutterbuck@spno.ca

Now is the time to tackle Poverty in Ontario

Hope you will consider sending a letter to your MPP with copies to the Premier and Opposition Leaders via the following link urging anti-poverty action as the 2013 Ontario provincial budget negotiation process unfolds. Please share with your friends and networks.

http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1734&ea.campaign.id=19624

Inequality is taking a deeper hold in Ontario, despite a promise by our political leaders to address poverty. Please urge our political leaders to keep their word.

The 8th Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft

Today is the 8^th Day of Action in the Workers Action Centre’s campaign to Stop Wage Theft against Ontario’s most vulnerable workers.

At the link following, you will find Agripina’s story. She recounts how she had to go to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to win $8,000 owed to her by her employer.

At the bottom of the page on this link, there is an email set up to send a message to the Minister of Labour demanding action to enforce protection for workers against the kind of experience that Agripina had.

http://www.workersactioncentre.org/12-days-of-action/

SPNO is sponsoring this 8^th Day of Action in support of WAC’s campaign to Stop Wage Theft.

We urge you to send a message to the Minister and to promote similar action today throughout your organization and your local community networks.

The holiday season will be happier for all Ontarians when all workers receive a fair return on their labour.