Here's a tip for you journalist types to search on...
Welfare keeps track of what people are paying for rooms, they have rental forms for each "client"
With a Freedom of Information request someone could compare what people ARE paying
and compare it with the $375 they are allotted
to see what percentage of Social Services recipients are paying part of their rent with their already ludicrous food/clothing/util amount of $230...
I bet it's over 70% of them! Happy hunting!
If we just gave people the whole $605 we could probably eliminate homelessness for the Olympics without these purges. The Social Services rental form is a huge stigma here. I've been turned down for a dozen rooms because of that damned form. Everything's great until they see it, then it's over! Those forms also make it almost impossible for 4 people on welfare to get a house or flat, because no landlord wants to fill out 4 forms for a rental.
I apply for over 30 jobs a week, every week. You can't "take any job" if one isn't offered or if you can't afford transit for one far away. Why aren't we giving these people bus passes? But that's another article entirely...
BC just spent 13 MILLION on a single shelter for 55 people in LANGLEY. That's almost as much as they pay out to all the recipients in the lower mainland in a year, for 55 fucking beds in bumfuck nowhere...They'll find lots of jobs out there...but at least we won't see them in vancouver. Sounds like a CAMP.
Another lucrative construction contract for someone's buds, instead of paying the poor a liveable rate...
"In 2009-10, B.C.’s budget for social housing is approximately $450 million, more than three times as much as in 2001."
So why not spend a couple million raising the rates and getting rid of the forms that are screwing people so badly, stop asking for receipts at all and give recipients a flat rate that's higher than it is, and spend these millions on properties that already exist like in-vancouver warehouses that can be divided cheaply into HUNDREDS of 12x12 units, instead of building brand new buildings that house FAITH-BASED business entities.
The actual people on welfare cost us only about $20-$25 million per year for all of them.
Raise their fucking rent rates to something reasonable and you won't even have to build these fucking money sinks that you'll tear down in 20 years.
And while you're at it, give landowners a tax break for every welfare recipient they have as a tenant!
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