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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