Hundreds of thousands of poor people in Ontario – whether they work or receive social assistance – spend more than half their income on shelter. This is a proposal to address this feature of poverty in Ontario by designing a new housing benefit.
A broad coalition from the rental housing industry, the non-profit housing sector, the community-based sector, as well as two private foundations, came together to develop these ideas.
It is no accident that the coalition includes Daily Bread Food Bank. According to the food bank’s 2008 survey of its clients, the average food bank client paid 77% of income on rent and utilities. When people have to pay the rent, they go without food. Forty-two per cent of the people in the food bank survey said they had gone without food for a whole day at least once during the past year.
Organizations representing the landlords who rent to the poor are also a part of this coalition. They know how housing markets work in this province. They know, for example, that the cost of housing is much higher in larger urban centres. Yet the housing benefit that people on welfare receive is based on the same formula no matter where the recipient lives. This proposal suggests a way to address that disparity.
The coalition also includes social policy consultants who are trying to draw attention to the unintended ways that tangled welfare rules defeat the very people doing their best to get ahead. Welfare rules and practices are partly responsible for inflation at the low end of the rental market. Some landlords inflate rents to match benefits, and both the poor and the government pay for it. There are ways to change welfare practices so this can’t be done so easily. This paper talks about how to do that.