Housing Now! Demo (Poverty Reduction Strategy Meeting)

(i apologize for the run-on appearance of this, but beats hell out of me why my computer doesn't want to give me paragraphs) it was a small but lively crew at the demo this morning. but, it made a worthwhile point, and news coverage of the event gave more attention to the message we made than to the government's attempt to assure us they are working on the problem. i happened to attend the hastily-called 'open' meeting on tuesday, and there, i learned the government's agenda is so limited as to make the process almost worthless. first, it's couched in the whole 'working within existing resources' rhetoric (read: no new money). second, the discussion is taking place in an empty room - there's no definition of poverty and no attempt to find one. so, the echoes we hear from the discussion are 'no new money, no new taxes, efficiency, blah, blah'. in other words, the same dreary bullshit we heard when mike harris began slashing the social safety net back in 1995. so, the government setting 'targets' for poverty reduction is a sham. if you don't have a definition of poverty, how can you reach a target? if you don't know where you are starting from, how do you know where you're going? safe, secure, stable and affordable housing are essential for individuals and families trying to work their way out of poverty, and, the housing allowance for an individual on OW, at $350/mo, is a cruel joke. if we're told to have a few months of salary available in case of emergency, the asset limit for OW recipients (up to the limit of one month's benefits, or approx $560), hardly gives a person getting off OW to work at minimum wage much of a secure base. from welfare to living from paycheque to paycheque - what got many of us there in the first place. the emphasis of the government on child poverty sets up a false battle between the 'deserving' poor and the 'undeserving' poor, to say nothing of the nonsense that children somehow live in a vacuum, that raising their standards of living can be done without improving the lot of the families in which they live. and, of course, it sets up the right's favourite straw man - the shiftless, addicted and addled bums who sponge off the public, or, in case the public hasn't noticed or aren't listening, those workers at places like mccormick's, cut loose without severance after years of work, and soon, those from h.j. jones just across the street. according to ross fair, who runs the city's OW program, the recent spike in the OW caseload comes in part from (largely) working men who've exhaused EI benefits and helped london win the dubiolus honour of being among the top three cities in ontario in terms of unemployment. sure, if you resolve to improve the lot of kids and start by saying you'll simply move the same dollars around, someone's gonna get flamed, and those bums'll pay the price.