The number of people receiving welfare in B.C. has recently begun to climb, but as Jody Paterson noted in a column in today's Victoria Times-Colonist, there are about 40 percent fewer people receiving assistance now than there were when the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001.
“Good news or bad?” she asked. The drop “is either a marvel of social strategy or a major reason we've ended up with so many people living on our streets.”
The government, however, has done little to figure out which it is.
The welfare ministry at one time did Exit Surveys to check what people were doing six months after leaving assistance, as reported in The Tyee, but quietly abandoned the effort in 2003 after it was pointed out nearly half the people they were looking for did not have phones. Those reports are no longer on the ministry's website.
More recently the ministry released a report called “Outcomes of those Leaving Assistance”, the Tyee wrote. The report is dated February, 2007, and the ministry posted it on its website in October, 2007.
It was to be the first of several reports created using tax data from Statistics Canada, but nearly two years later the housing and social development ministry is yet to release subsequent reports.
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. Reach him here.
5
Login or register to post comments
realisticman
3 years ago
Province failed to follow welfare leavers
The headline says so much more than the article. The Province failed.
Whoever wrote the headline must want more people on welfare because we read that 40% fewer people are on the welfare roll - and they have gone missing.
Perhaps this is call for electronic tagging of recipients.
MichaelT
3 years ago
uhh the latter
uhh the latter
G West
3 years ago
Probably start by reading the article
Seems to me I recall a well-known commenter here at Tyee making the claim a year or so ago that cell phones were an absolute necessity for human beings.....
I don't think the ministry cared - they just wanted these human beings off the books.
And, relying on Statistics Canada taxation data?
They must be joking!
morechatter
3 years ago
The No Where People
With no where to live and some have a place to go during the day but its at night they come out. I remember seeing a mom and her young child huddled in a door way trying to stay warm. At first Vancouver citizens were pretty outraged with the bodies of people sleeping and living on the streets. But its becoming more the norm as many are left with out a real home except for the shelter cot they find open. It would add up for sure because people on welfare also find themselves on the street or hungry as only receive enough to do one or the other. You decide. So it would certainly make sense those unable to pay the rent would be living on the streets.
sunshine coast girl
3 years ago
Well, of course
that's why so many people are living on the street. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Total monthly payable for a single employable is $610 of which $375 is for shelter. (Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but at one point of my life I had to use this service, in the late 70's, and I believe $375 was the shelter amount then. Course, at that time you could actually find a place for that amount). Very few people can find shelter for that and if you already have an apartment that costs more than $375 you have to get the landlord to agree to accept that or else Social Assistance makes you give up your place. If you have to borrow money to make up the difference or if someone like your parents help you with your rent, they deduct dollar for dollar the aid that you got. They don't provide lists of places where you can live on that amount (mostly because there aren't any) and they still insist that there are lots and lots of jobs around for unskilled workers. Never mind the thousands and thousands of lost jobs since December.
Furthermore, single employables are not entitled to make any money whatsoever, so if they can find any work at all, every dollar is deducted. You can never have any more than $610, however you try.
Disgusting!! We are such a caring society, aren't we?