Kendall Worth interviews Janice, a long time Nova Scotia ACORN member who lives on income assistance. Janice describes her experiences of being an ACORN member as nothing but positive.
Kendall Worth reports that a lack of affordable housing is increasingly becoming a topic of conversation and a big problem in his community.
Making involuntary movements, fidgeting, and talking to yourself are the kinds of things that draw the public’s attention, and next thing you know there’s police or security asking you to leave, writes Kendall Worth. That’s not fair.
Kendall Worth: “There need to be further increases in the income assistance allowances. Everyone, including income assistance recipients, should be able to shop in grocery stores rather than rely on the food banks.”
Kendall Worth: Earlier in the year I had the opportunity to interview Mariana. She did not want me to use her real name because she fears that she will be applying for welfare within the next couple of years.
Kendall Worth: “I am providing this short message to my readers and followers of the Nova Scotia Advocate to let you all know that I have decided to take this year off from writing about Valentine’s Day.”
For those of you who believe in telling welfare recipients right to their faces to get a job, you are doing nothing to help them. All you are doing is raising their anxiety and the mental health issues they already have, writes Kendall Worth.
When income assistance recipients ask how soon they can expect to receive the COVID vaccine, the answer they get is, “Oh, maybe by July, August, or September. Income assistance recipients are saying that they have been isolated from their social contacts long enough, but if we have to prepare for these extra few months then we got no choice.
Kendall Worth: It is safe to say that the ESIA transformation is a major broken promise by our current Liberal government because even though some change has happened, the change that happened was very little.
Kendall Worth thinks about how people on income assistance with part time employment can benefit from unions and how perhaps people on income assistance could even form a union of their own.