“Punitive!”
That is the word Jean Swanson, a community organizer in the Downtown
Eastside and author of Poor Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion, uses to
describe welfare policy in B.C. And if anyone thinks the increase in
welfare rates announced in the provincial budget marks a change in that
policy they would be dead wrong.
Those familiar with welfare
in B.C. will see no change in such barriers to accessing the program as
the three-week wait, the two-year independence test, the two-year
limit, the 1-800 number enquiry and the mandatory internet application
process. These barriers combined with a lack of affordable housing are
what have contributed to the rising rate of homelessness not only in
Vancouver but across the province, according to Swanson who now helps
coordinate the province-wide Raise the Rates campaign from Carnegie
Centre.
In 2001, before the Liberals put up these barriers,
about 15 per cent of the street homeless in Vancouver were not on
welfare, but by early 2004 over 75 per cent of those homeless said they
were not on welfare, a 2006 paper by the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives (CCPA) entitled Denied Assistance reported. So, while the
B.C. government trumpets the reduction in welfare caseloads as evidence
that the poorest of the province are getting back to work, the story on
the street in Vancouver, as anyone can see, says it isn’t so.
Even
while the unemployment rate in B.C. was rising in 2002, the welfare
caseload dropped dramatically as a result of the new barriers to
welfare, and it continued to drop up to the present at a rate greater
than later decreases in the provincial unemployment rate, according to
the CCPA paper, demonstrating that those who were not accessing welfare
since 2002 were not being absorbed into the economy. And that means
homelessness for many.
“The province needs to be building 2,000
units of affordable housing every year,” Swanson goes on to say. “We’re
not talking radical here. We could have it without raising taxes.”
The
Liberals have allotted $38 million for social housing in the coming
year. In contrast Raise the Rates has costed their 2,000 units at $700
million. The obvious conclusion is that there will continue to be, by
most measures, a severe shortage in affordable housing.
Swanson
did a calculation last year that shows how much people on welfare have
been squeezed since as far back as 1980. “I figured using the Bank of
Canada inflation calculator that if people had the same purchasing
power last year as they did in 1980 they would have got $802 instead of
$510.” The figures refer to single people on welfare now referred to as
“expected to work”. Although their rates have gone up to $610 with the
new budget, these figures should still create a lot of frustration
among welfare recipients.
So, how did it wind up that welfare
recipients in the first decade of the millennium fare so much worse
than their brothers and sisters did in the 1980s?
In 1996
Ottawa finally ended the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), which had its
annual increases capped in the few years preceding that. It was a
federal cost-sharing program with the provinces that helped fund social
assistance. According to Swanson, “CAP had more rights for people on
welfare. The right to an adequate income or an income that met basic
requirements, the right not to have to work for welfare, the right to
get welfare if you were in need – that one is really being violated –
and the right to an appeal. We still have kind of a half-assed appeal
system, but it isn’t very good. So, Ottawa caused it,” Swanson says.
Of
course, the province has made several cuts to welfare rates since 1980.
Moreover, the unwillingness of the provincial government to index the
rates to inflation has allowed virtual cuts to be made every year as
inflation increased. The rate hike that the Liberals announced a few
days ago doesn’t even keep up with inflation since 1992 when the last
major shelter rate increase took place. Failing to index is another way
to take back from people on welfare what they desperately need.
The
increase in the budget of $100 dollars to singles on welfare, Swanson
says, “might mean that they don’t have to scrounge quite so much for
food, they don’t have to use the bins so much, panhandle so much.”
The word “punitive” in the light of all this is a painfully accurate way to describe welfare policy in B.C. today.