More on Housing...

So, for the last couple of days, World Report on CBC has been feeding fuel to my fire about housing in Canada. Currently, the government is about to release a new social housing initiative. I am still waiting for the release at the moment. But so far the gist of what I understand is that the government plans on subsidizing rent for low income people...15thousand people is the number I heard.

While I feel it is great that the help is coming I also feel it is misplaced and once again another demonstration of an ineffective government. The problem, the much larger problem, is the lack of available affordable housing. Currently, housing starts for rental units are declining, especially in BC becuase it is a sales market right now and developers can make quick money at making houses than at rental units. Rental units have never been a money maker and usually the government has to subsidize developers to even get rental units made, started, whatever you want to call it.

So, here the government has graciously decided that they will help people who are spending large amounts of their income on housing. Great, but what about those who have no housing...perhaps, which is true in a lot of cases they have paying jobs, but no housing.

Yesterday and housing advocate and centre coordinater for a homeless shelter in Calgary sent out 500 emails to other housing shelters, stating that people who want to come to Calgary in search of work should be discouraged because there is no housing. None. There are people who are working but are living in cars, tents, or in shelters with no near solution of housing. Winter is coming...I bet you the death toll will rise.

I find it funny that citizens are doing what the government is steering them do, support themselves...and yet the government is also making it impossible for the citizens to be successful. Okay, piles of work, but no homes...we don't need a crystal ball to forsee this outcome.

I certainly do not advocate this neo-liberalist point of view, every person for themselves. I do not enjoy that I am part of a capitalistic system that has no care for a sense of community. Currently the way the income assistance and employment programs are set up by the government operate is to facilitate those who already have the means. So, tell me how far you can go on 575/mos. 325 is meant for rent? Workers are now only reachable by phone, and you aren't assigned a worker, so you will always have a different one and have to establish a new relationship. You have to have an address for at least three months to recieve any assistance. So if you are homeless and decide this is crap but you need a place to start...well, you don't have an address, so no help for you. Same goes for people who want off assistance but can't find fulltime work or still need subsidizing. The government has removed the ability to make anything over 200 dollars...if you have external income of over 200 dollars you don't get assistance!

Part of me believes of pull yourself up by the bootstraps...however, the culture does not generate a healthy atmosphere for a large number of people to do so.

And the sense that middle class people can turn their eyes from what is happening and focus on what fabric they will get to cover their couch, appalls me. 38% of people who were homeless in Kelowna in 2005 reported that they lost their homes while employed!! Simply being hard working and motivated does not automatically mean one is removed from ever ending up on the street, especially in the current political capitalistic neo liberalist atmosphere!!

I could go on about those who are on the street now, and mental illness and drug abuse...but I will sum it up as a product of this massive emphasis on the individual instead of the community.

Right now, housing needs to be generated...we have to start somewhere. Housing is a right, should be right, I hope someday will be a right. It definitely won't solve all the problems, but I feel it would be a step in the right direction.