I couldn’t attend last week’s Nova Scotia ACORN community meeting, but the results of their tenants survey presents some interesting (and rather shocking) findings. From cold-only showers to garbage in the common areas, from too cold in winter to too hot in summer, here are the reasons why we need landlord licensing.
A penny saved is a penny earned, says Community Services, as the department closed its 2016-17 financial books with a $2,4 million surplus in its Employment Support and Income Assistance (ESIA) program. That news may be difficult to stomach for people on welfare who struggled to make ends meet and saw their bus passes taken away or special diet allowances cut back over that same year.
We revisit the story of Mike Foley, the single father pursued by Community Services and the RCMP for fraud charges that advocates consider dubious. After months of inaction Foley received another phone call from the RCMP informing him that the investigation of ‘fraud’ is on again. Meanwhile, a terrified Foley and daughter Ashley continue to get by with very little money and no medications.
The excellent Halifax Humanities program exposes people on low income to university level literature and philosophy classes. This video about the program is special to the Nova Scotia Advocate. We spotted no fewer than three of our regular writers, and we know there are more. Check it out!
New contributor Lucy MacDonald knows all about homelessness and living in shelters. Community Services is actually fostering homelessness rather than solving it with is impractical rules and inadequate shelter allowances, she says.
This weekend video actually started as a story published in the Nova Scotia Advocate, written by a mother who wanted to tell how being on welfare affected her and her children, the stigma she faced, and how it can happen to anyone.
Caring for a child is work, but society doesn’t seem to see it that way. “Single parents on welfare are often portrayed as lazy or ‘getting a free ride’; as though their children effortlessly raise themselves,” writes new contributor Lenore Hemming. “It’s interesting that our society only views child care as valuable if it is someone else’s child.”
Today is frequent contributor Kendall Worth’ birthday, which leads him to reflect on birthday celebrations of poor people. He asked, and this is what he heard. “Kendall as much as we would love to celebrate our birthdays the same way ordinary people do, we can’t. Life is just not normal for us because of our income level we live on.”
Kendall Worth lately has been hearing a lot of stories about special diet allowances being cut and unpleasant annual reviews. Lives on welfare are getting harder, and he doubts that the welfare transformation will make things better..
Earlier Kendall Worth wrote about how even a short hospitalization and surgery can throw a poor person’s live into a stressful chaos. Who’s going to drive you home if you have nobody? How are you going to get to the Food Bank if you need to stay in bed for weeks? How are you going to keep your apartment clean and tidy? And what about the social isolation? Well, turns out that in this case at least lots of people are willing to step up to the plate.