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

The Road to Hell. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Recently, a radio personality here in the local market said something interesting. He said that suicides are not reported as such out of respect for friends and family of the deceased. That’s fair enough, bearing in mind all funerals are announced, and that pretty much everyone who isn’t completely destitute gets some kind of obituary. The general public doesn’t necessarily need to know the cause of death, although there are often mentions of ‘a courageous battle against cancer’ and the like.

But I have been curious for a long time, as to just what percentage of clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program, or Ontario Works, (welfare), commit suicide in any given year. 

The most cynical answer is politics, it is public opinion. It is also a little bit about how such things work.

This figure is completely bogus, okay? I made it up: but let us say that there are roughly 750,000 ODSP clients in the province of Ontario, and let’s say there are a further 125,000 on Ontario Works benefits. (That part's real enough. - ed.)

If a half of one percent of that group, or those groups, committed suicide in any given year, this could now be compared to other social, demographic groups.

And the fact is, it would probably compare unfavourably.

That is to say, it would be more—

And knowing that, we could investigate the causes, and apply some remedy.

One would think.

We don’t know for sure—we don’t have those statistics. But surely gut instinct, as well as reason, tells us that the rate for people on these programs would be measurably higher than the suicide rate among plumbers, sport fishermen, snake charmers, mountain climbers, or any number of groups in higher economic brackets.

Surely this would be a political hot potato by any ethical standard.

Surely the opposition parties, both right and left of the currently ruling Liberals, here in Ontario, would make much of such a thing.

Maybe that would be just. Maybe that’s just—

But, in fairness to the Liberals, no preceding government has ever attempted to gather those statistics, for if they had, surely this would be a matter for the public record. And, (and this is gut instinct again), certainly no upcoming government would ever undertake to record, and to gather, and make use of those statistics, because they know the only answer is money.

And all they have are thoughts and prayers.

The road to hell has always been paved with good intentions.

Whoops. Almost forgot my point. But somebody somewhere, a cop, a doctor, a coroner, knew whether it was a suicide.

This information is available ladies and gentlemen.

They just don't want to know.

For obvious reasons.

END

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They'd Gut It If They Got the Chance. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Yesterday my teeth were hurting on the left side. That sort of pain will often spread sympathetically to other teeth, two or three of them in this case. Today, I’ve got a full-blown toothache, which two or three Tylenol 3s barely seem to touch, and that’s with 30-mg of codeine per pill. It’s barely lunch time and that’s a lot of dope. (Washed down with beer. – ed.)

In the past we have noted that the Ontario Disability Support Program pension is really only about $13,800.00 per year for a single adult. In the interest of objectivity, the poverty line is roughly $22,000.00 per year here in Ontario, and this writer is presently paying 69.5 % of that pension in rent.

The landlord just sent a tax receipt and it’s like $9,800.00 per year. It’s nothing fancy, but it was nice and clean when I moved in and lately it’s even been quiet.

This is why we work part-time: so that we can eat something once in a while, something that didn’t come from a food bank, so we can have a car to go to work…an endless cycle, once you get into it, one with not very many good outcomes, or ‘miracles’, as people like to call them.

There’s more. Basically, I just picked up the phone and called my dentist. I’ve got an appointment for next week, and it will be covered by the ODSP Dental Benefit. All I have to do is to show the card. If the doc prescribes, same thing again. Just show the card at the pharmacy.

(All I have to do is to make it through the misery until next week.)

There’s even more to it than that. While a neighbour or a friend might also be getting a base pension of $13,800.00 per year, her medical needs are unique, and much different from my own. I basically didn’t go to the doctor’s for something like seven years before my conscience got on me. She’s in there every month, getting her meds, getting a monthly depot injection, and in her case, the social workers actually show up at her door once a day, to ensure she’s taking the pills. I looked up some of her meds and the cost is substantial. The social workers have to be paid as well as the doctors and the nurses.

Yet in terms of base pension, she’s still living thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line, just as I am. Since our medical needs are unique, and being adequately covered, this seems fair enough to me. Insofar as that goes...we'll talk about the rates another time.

To put this in perspective, if someone working full time for minimum wage had to pay for this out of their own pocket, it’s an easy six hundred, maybe a thousand a month for all of the medications that she is required to take. This is why the Province of Ontario’s Pharmacare + program is so wonderful. It’s going to help a lot of people.

The fact is, most patients/workers wouldn’t be able to afford anything like it, and therefore, they really couldn’t afford to work. Certainly not at minimum wage. In some odd sense, people on ODSP and even Ontario Works, (welfare), are better off than the lowest-paid workers. The money is not quite so good, but the benefits are a lot better and you don’t have to put in forty hours a week for some scab employer just to survive—in pain, and in some shit-box substandard housing somewhere.

This, I think, is why they raised the minimum wage.

People simply couldn’t afford to work that cheap anymore.

Just for the record, it wasn’t a Progressive Conservative idea to bring this in. It was a Liberal idea—so far the bad guys aren’t saying too much about it.

But I reckon they’d gut it if they had even half a chance.

END

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