On Geared-to-Income Housing. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

It must have been three years ago, when I went down to Sarnia-Lambton Housing and picked up the application forms for Geared-to-Income housing. I worked on them, but I never finished. There are places all over the county, for one thing, and quite a few in neighbourhoods where I don’t want to live. There’s no doubt I am eligible.

They sat on my desk for a couple of years before I threw them out.

I didn’t want to live in public housing. My brother and my two nephews live in public housing, where tenants who qualify pay one-third of their income in rent. My brother’s rent is based on his ODSP income, which he qualified for, due to back injuries, chronic pain, etc.

And the place is a stinking shit-hole, and he hates his neighbours, and any number of tenants come and go, some of them evicted for criminal activity, there are stray cats all over the place, and; in a recent homicide case, the victim was literally picked up there and then driven to the scene of the crime by some so-called friends...

Where I live now, I like it, especially when the building is quiet. It’s a big apartment unit compared to some others that I have seen. I went shopping for different places, mostly in response to some problems of noise. Right now, the local economy is good, the rental market is tight, and I didn’t see much that I would be willing to move for—essentially I would be moving sideways, possibly downwards. Not exactly upwards, where I am sure things would look much nicer.

It’s not always about money, either.

Sure, I could probably save myself a hundred a month by giving up the second bedroom.

I’ve never been able to use it, the most diplomatic thing to say about the people on the other side of that wall, would be that they’re on a different routine than I am—

The place has always felt temporary, to the extent I’ve never hung a single picture.

It’s also the only home I have—

‘Nuff said.

The troubling question is, where would I end up? This is a nice neighbourhood, and I’m not moving to some stinking shit-hole just to save fifty or a hundred a month. For that kind of money, I’m more likely to cut down on the smoking, stay at home more, or in the final analysis, show up, fairly often, at a Canadian food bank, rather than go through all the disruption of moving. Which tends to be a crap-shoot in terms of results in my experience.

Be that as it may.

Here’s a funny thing. When we say your rent would be pegged at ‘one-third of income’, we tend for forget that words can be used to obscure as well as to inform. The ODSP looks at income differently from the way the average person understands it.

On the ODSP pay stub, (and the same for welfare, ‘Ontario Works’), there is a division.

There are two ‘separate’ payments lumped together. For a single adult, ‘Basic needs’ are set presently at $662.00 for the max. The Shelter portion is presently set at $489.00 a month. 

Seems simple enough—although you really can’t get an apartment for that anywhere in the province.

But the minute you move into geared-to-income housing, the ODSP, in my case, would immediately reduce my benefit, that’s because I would only be paying ‘one-third of my income’ in rent. Note this is not one third of the shelter portion. It’s a third of my entire income. It’s a tricky kind of Hollywood accounting, one that is, quite frankly, a bit beyond me. How are your math skills? It is also true that I am presently paying 69.1 % of my ODSP income, in a building and a neighbourhood that I actually like, one that has some quality of life, insofar as it is compared to my brother’s neighbourhood. Just to be fair, in public housing, the heat, the electricity, the water, any property taxes, that’s all paid…by somebody somewhere. I believe they’re called taxpayers. The sort of people who go in comments sections and complain about the government lining its pockets. Let’s be honest, some of them aren’t very sophisticated. Doug Ford might appreciate unsophisticated voters, I’m not too fond of them myself.

There is more to the subsidy, obviously, than meets the immediate eye. There are threads and strings everywhere on this one, as builders can get assistance to build such housing, projects which employ working people, and it is also true that the tenants, in many cases, at least have some work. (If you have absolutely zero income, presumably one is politely directed more towards the homeless shelter.)

Yet I can honestly say that it never looked worth it to me—where I live the same basic things hold true, in that heat and hydro, as we call it here in Canada, are included in the rent. I’m just paying what may be considered market value, considering the state of things at the present time. (This must be understood as the result of many things past. Market forces exist and work over time. They have a history which is fixed, although the future may still be malleable.) We could quibble with the yearly rent increases, which surely over the long term, must have distorted upwardly, what this unit, or any unit in this kind of building should actually be going for. History is how we got here from way back there, essentially.

In terms of revenue streams, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to maintain a bunch of walk-ups, as compared to securing the funding to build a completely new high-rise, or condominium development. Or any kind of housing development.

This is why new construction tends to be higher-end. The units might be a bit bigger, a little more complex, nicer finishes and materials, but you get the initial investment back more quickly. This still doesn’t compare all that favourably, when set next to an existing building, one that is, in general, well-maintained, and it has been under the current ownership for ten, twenty, thirty or even more years.

The building I live in is a bit of a cash-cow, I am convinced.

I don’t begrudge anyone their success, if it is well and honestly earned.

But in my opinion, if someone could get into geared-to-income housing, without any great resulting hit on their ODSP, OW, or any other public assistance, (this hit never applies to low-wage workers and their families, who may be paying a third of their income, but aren't docked on that income), then this government would be doing them a very great service.

It’s just another form of the grand experiment in Basic Income that is presently going on here already in the Province of Ontario.

END

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The math.

Okay. $662.00 plus $489.00, equals $1,151.00, per month, for a single adult. Divide this by three and you would get your rent, $383.66, per month, if you were to qualify for geared-to-income housing. Subtract that from your $489.00 per month 'Shelter costs' and you can see that a person sort of loses $105.34 per month.

What they're not telling you, is that this comes off of your 'Personal needs' tab. This is the inescapable conclusion, considering that heat, hydro, water and maintenance were already included in your previous, free-market accommodation. No one ever questions these things.

But you are not going to get your $662.00 per month plus the leftover $105.34 a month. 

That's because your 'shelter needs' have been met, and so why would they give it to you.

#arithmetic #hollywood_accounting