Links

Solving the Housing Crisis

City in Focus says,
The only permanent solution to housing need and poverty is to ensure that people have access to adequate income. The crucial first stage in achieving this goal is to enact legislation guaranteeing workers a living wage and welfare recipients a shelter allowance that reflects the actual cost of their regional housing market.

Carnegie Community Action Project

Working to build community in the Downtown East Side

Canadian Social Research Links

This site is a virtual resource centre for Canadian social program information. This webpage is a compilation of key provincial and territorial government welfare links - it's a great resource for getting the government perspective on welfare issues and for comparing data from one province/territory to another.

Colour of Poverty

On September 5, 2007, the Colour of Justice Network announced the launching of the Colour of Poverty Campaign - a province-wide community-based effort to help raise public awareness about the serious problem of poverty within the racialized communities of Ontario. With the Department of Canadian Heritage as a key sponsor, the Colour of Poverty Campaign partners have developed a series of ten Fact Sheets addressing different aspects of racialized poverty and its negative impacts on education & learning, health & well-being, employment, income levels, justice and policing, immigration and settlement, housing and homelessness and food security in Ontario.

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Why Poverty is So Deep in the Downtown Eastside

This article by Jean Swanson, Coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project and long-term anti-poverty activist, provides useful background on the Downtown Eastside and clearly outlines the impact of policy changes on this community.

BC Progress Board Report: Monitoring and Reducing the Incidence of Poverty (July 10, 2007)

In 2005. BC ranked second last in Canada in terms of the proportion of families living below low income cut-offs (LICO) at 17.3 percent compared to the Canadian average of 15.2 percent and top performing PEI with 9.4 percent BC's share has been above the Canadian average since 1995, and while it has been on a generally decreasing track since 1997. British Columbia had the lowest annual improvement of the provinces between 1996 and 2005.

Previous Progress Board research suggests that lower labour market engagement in BC vis-a-vis Canada, as well as differences in provincial and federal transfers and taxes explain some of the difference in BC's performance on LICO. BC's underground economy — unreported legal activities such as under-the-table services, and illegal activities such as those related to the drug trade — is likely a contributing factor to BC's lower relative labour market engagement Paradoxically, BC's official employment rate has been climbing steadily over the last five years. Though direct measurement and comparison of the size of the underground economy is difficult due to its hidden nature, a larger relative service sector and higher drug-related crime and drug use suggest BC likely has a larger underground economy than Canada overall. Underground economic activity blurs the relationship between official low income and measurements of poverty. However. despite this. efforts to monitor and reduce poverty by increasing productive labour market engagement must continue to be a priority. Recent provincial initiatives to increase housing options is an important initiative to help improve living standards for many people, especially for those in strained circumstances.

See full report Page 38

Media contacts

A province-wide list of media outlets and their contact information to help you or your organisation organise media coverage of events related to the Raise the Rates campaign.

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Families and children were hit very hard by the welfare cuts of 2002 - almost 1 in 4 children in BC live in poverty, a third of food bank users are children, and single parents are more than 60% likely to live in poverty. The 2007 provincial budget welfare increase did little to change this.

More information on the effects of welfare policies on families and children can be found here.

Background document (March 29, 2007).

Other resources:

Five years after the cuts, poverty is worse
Graham Riches, Directer of Social Work, UBC and Jean Swanson, Carnegie Community Action Project.(April 2007)

Welfare reform in BC: Five years later, who would declare it a success?
Bruce Wallace of the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group has written on how BC Social Workers have responded to the welfare changes over these last few years.

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In BC the welfare cheque is made up of a shelter part, for rent, utilities and phone, and a support part for everything else. In 2002 the BC government cut:

• $51 a month from single parents’ support;
• $47 a month from support of single people aged 55-59;
• $98 a month from single people aged 60-64;
• $94 a month from couples aged 55-59;
• $145 a month from couples aged 60-64;
• $55 a month from three person family for shelter;
• $60 a month from four person family for shelter;
• $75 a month from five person family for shelter.

Before the recent welfare rate increase, welfare rates for non-disabled people hadn't been raised for 12 years. In that time, they had lost 30% of their purchasing power.

Effects of 2007 Budget: The rate increases in the February 2007 budget, when you take inflation into account, have meant that for people in the 'expected to work' category, a single person, aged 18 to 54, is now $30 a month better off than they were in 2002, but everyone else is worse off.

Senior income assistance rates, as well as MLA salaries, are indexed to inflation but welfare rates are not.

According to data released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, raising the welfare rates by 100% would have cost only about one-third of BC's surplus.

We Want the Provincial Government to:

Raise welfare rates to the Market Basket Measure and index them to inflation.

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Barriers to Accessing Welfare

• The three week wait means that after a person first seeks welfare, they have to wait three weeks before even being allowed to formally apply, even though most people are desperate and have exhausted every other avenue before walking through the door.
• The arbitrary two-year independence test means you have to give extensive documentation proving you have worked for two consecutive years prior to getting welfare.
• Administrative barriers like the requirement for multiple appointments to get a cheque, and the completion of computer-based orientation, keep people in need from getting help when they desperately need it.

While BC's Ombudsman forced the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance to change procedures so that—at least in theory—people in emergency need can by-pass the three week wait, the other barriers still apply, and advocates report that numerous people in dire need still can't get immediate help. These barriers were cited by Vancouver’s Homeless Action plan as being the main reason that homelessness doubled between 2002 and 2005.

Effects of 2007 Budget: All of these barriers are still in place.

Reducing the number of people on welfare doesn't amount to poverty reduction when people in need are being denied help.

We Want the Provincial Government to:

Remove the arbitrary barriers to accessing welfare.

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Many of BC's welfare policies actually discourage people from working, in particular the elimination of earning exemptions for non-disabled people. In 2002, the government ended the $200 earnings exemption for families and $100 for single people who not qualify for disability.

Only people who have the Persons with Disability and Persons with Multiple Barriers status are able to keep any earnings. The earnings exemption for people with disabilities is $500 but only a minority of people in these categories are able to work.

Without an earnings exemption, every dollar earned is a dollar taken off the monthly welfare cheque. That's a tax of 100% on earned income.

BC is the only province in Canada that does not allow welfare recipients to keep some of the money they earn.

Effects of 2007 Budget: The budget did not expand the earnings exemption to include people without disabilities.

We Want the Provincial Government to:

Let all people on welfare keep at least $500/month of their earnings.

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Minimum Wage

The incomes of minimum wage workers aren't enough to afford adequate housing and basic living necessities.

BC's minimum wage of $8/hour is only 80% of the poverty line, and has not been increased since November 1, 2001.

BC is the only province that has a reduced wage of $6/hour for the first 500 hours of paid work. Most low-wage jobs are not high-skill and require only two weeks training at the most.

A popular misconception is that the majority of minimum wage earners are teenagers living at home in middle class families. In fact, most are women and many have some post-secondary education.

Of all poor children in Canada, one third have parents who worked full time for the whole year.

Effects of 2007 Budget: The provincial government failed to raise the minimum wage.

We Want the Provincial Government to:

Raise the minimum wage to $10/hour, index it to inflation, and abolish the $6 training wage.

Minimum Wage Campaign: The BC Federation of Labour have joined with the Canadian Federation of Students to launch a campaign to raise BC's minimum wage. Please sign the petition here.

Their resource More than 100,000 Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage can be found here.

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Affordable Housing

There is a severe lack of affordable social housing in BC. According to the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation, most cities and towns in the province recorded extremely low vacancy rates in the April 2007 rental survey. 13 of the 24 centres covered reported an apartment vacancy rate of less than one percent. Vancouver’s vacancy rate was 0.9%, slightly higher than Victoria at 0.8% and Kelowna at 0.7%.

This, combined with the low welfare rates and high rental prices, makes it very hard for the poorest people in BC to find a safe and clean place to live.

We Want the Provincial Government to:

Build 2000 units of non-market social housing per year in addition to assisted living and shelter beds.

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International Human Rights

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its May 2006 review of Canada's record (1998-2006) in meeting its obligations under international law (the ICESCR) to respect, protect and fulfill economic, social and cultural rights identified 33 Principal Subjects of Concern and made 40 Recommendations (UNESC: E/C.12/CAN/Co/5, 1 - 19 May, 2006).

In particular it noted:

• Most of its 1993 to 1998 recommendations had not been implemented;
• Insufficiency of minimum wage and social assistance benefits to ensure and adequate standard of living;
• 11.2 percent of population still living below the poverty line (2004) with higher rates for Aboriginal peoples, African Canadians, immigrants, persons with disabilities, youth, low-income women and single mothers;
• Federal transfers for social assistance do not include standards in relation to the rights set forth in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including the right to social security;
• Social assistance benefits are lower than a decade ago and do not ensure an adequate standard of living;
• deep concern abut the National Child Benefit claw back system;
• 7.4% of the population (2.3 million people) suffer from food insecurity;
• homelessness still not being adequately addressed.

Key recommendation: The Committee recommends that federal, provincial and territorial legislation be brought in line with Canada's obligations under the Covenant, and that such legislation should protect poor people in all jurisdictions from discrimination because of economic or social status.

The key point is that BC continues to act in violation of its obligations under international law to respect, protect and fulfill the fundamental rights of vulnerable British Columbians to food, clothing and shelter.

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