ODSP Guidelines Are Bloody Murder. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

One of the interesting things about the Ontario Disability Support Program, is how the guidelines for income support tend to actually keep people in poverty.

Bear in mind, it was never meant to provide anything more than basic subsistence. When it was instituted, it was ground-breaking stuff and very welcome. That was because there was simply nothing there before.

In previous stories, I have talked about the guidelines for business and employment, where there is limit to how much a person can earn before being hit with a fifty percent claw-back on each and every dollar earned over that limit. The government has never denied that the disabled have the right to work, in fact Dalton McGuinty, former premier, even put it in writing for me: “You have to right to fully participate in the life of this province,” this letter from about 2006.

I really ought to have that framed.

In the case of someone getting into geared-to-income housing, a previous story noted how the rent is pegged at one-third of income, rather than one-third of the shelter portion, based on a client’s monthly benefit.

But ignoring whether someone is in subsidized housing or simply renting, or in the odd case, still owns their own home, there are other ways in which this subtle discrimination works. 

The guidelines were written by some of the best lawyers, incidentally—which is why you have to read it carefully.

If an adult on the ODSP pension enters into a relationship, and if a couple moves in together, then the one on ODSP will have their shelter portion reduced, possibly even eliminated, assuming the partner is making enough money—and it doesn’t have to be much. They might be barely making the poverty line, for a single adult, already. Now their spouse loses the $489.00/month shelter portion of their disability pension. This leaves them $662.00 per month (their personal needs allowance) to contribute to the family’s home accounts. We can see the financial part of this relationship is already off to a bit of a rocky start. People are barely getting by on minimum wage, and now a person is in a relationship with a disabled person, who has just lost a good chunk of their pension.

The same thing is true if two people on ODSP, or Ontario Works, fall in love, decide to start a family together, and to cohabitate. Either one must lose the shelter portion, or both partners lose half of the shelter portion. Boy; that sure sounds nice and logical. Yet there is no way anyone can get even a one-bedroom apartment in the Province of Ontario for $489.00 per month. You can maybe get a room, one room, with shared kitchen and bath facilities, in the typical downtown rooming house. Here in Sarnia, there’s one advertised at $95.00/week. 

How this is going to work for our honeymoon couple is open to some debate…but at least they’d be together, assuming there isn’t a sign on the door saying, ‘limit one occupant per room’, but then, if they were in different rooms, it’s back to the status quo. Both are now entitled to the shelter portion again.

Hey—they can still share a kitchen and a bathroom.

All of this tends to prevent clients of the ODSP from bettering their situation, assuming one believes that two can live as cheaply as one. My old man would have said, “Yeah. As long as one is a horse and the other one is a sparrow.”

A very wise man, my old man—

Okay, so a single adult gets about $13,800.00 per year in pension. Mathematically two such pensions in the same household would add up to $27,400.00 per year, and with some (home) economics of scale, it is arguable that there would be some savings. This could not possibly add up to anything like 12 x $489.00 per year. Which is what they lose by moving in together. 

The funny thing is, marriage, is subsidized in so many ways, at almost any other socio-economic level.

As long as you’re not disabled, as long as you’re not on the ODSP pension or Ontario Works.

If a couple, or the one partner on ODSP, could keep their full pension, this would result in income that had been loosened up. They would be unburdened by the need to pay a substantial portion of rent for a one-bedroom apartment, some of which would always come out of a single client’s personal needs portion—the other part of what is actually one payment, with the division into two categories as it is presently shown on ODSP payment stubs basically bullshit and they all know it. The disabled are the ones who can’t figure it out.

Now, in terms of equity, or as some prefer, inequality, a couple, both of whom are working full-time, minimum-wage jobs, would not be hit with the same penalty—yet the penalty is imposed on Ontario’s disabled, who number among our most vulnerable citizens.

No, we only have the nerve to do that to the disabled.

Anyone else, and they’d be screaming bloody murder.

END

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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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