Raise the Rates Rally at Ontario Ministry of Finance

Stop the attacks on ODSP (Disability) benefits: no merger!

·Raise the Minimum Wage to $14 Now!

When: Thursday, October 17 at 12 Noon

Where: Corner of College and University, Toronto

*Lunch Provided

*ASL interpretation available

*East-End meet-up point with TTC Tokens: 11:30am, Carlton/Sherbourne

TRANSPORTATION to the RALLY:

*EAST-END meet-up point with TTC Tokens: 11:30am, Carlton/Sherbourne

*PARKDALE: meet-up point with TTC Tokens: 11am @ PARC (1499 Queen St. West)

*JANE-FINCH: Free Bus: 11am @ York Gate Mall in the No Frills parking lot
*Look for the Pink Bus* (bus returns 1:30 PM))

Download the flyer/poster here

Join OCAP and allies on Thursday, October 17, the International Day for the ‘Eradication of Poverty’, as part of a Province-wide Week of Action, for a noon-time rally at the Ministry of Finance. We will fight the plans to merge Ontario Works and ODSP and demand real action on poverty from the Wynne Government!

*Restore Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit
*Stop the attacks on Disability benefits
*Raise the Rates of Social Assistance 55%!
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Deliver this letter to your local MPP, click here to download
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DOWNLOAD the English 'RAISE THE RATES' Flyer Here:
And Download the French 'RAISE THE RATES' Flyer Here!

The Raise the Rates Campaign is holding a week of action to fight the attack on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) and demand living income for all in this Province. We will challenge plans to merge Ontario Works and ODSP and demand real action on poverty from the Wynne Government. We will be demanding restoration of the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit, supporting the right of First Nations Communities to control delivery of social assistance programs and calling for the raising of the minimum wage in Ontario to $14 an hour and social assistance rates by at least 55%. Actions will be held across the Ontario throughout the week, and uniting for Provincial convergence Saturday, October 19th in Sudbury.

In place of the endless talk of this Government about 'poverty reduction' we will be taking action!

PROVINCIAL CONVERGENCE:
Anti-poverty organizations from across Ontario will be converging in Sudbury on Saturday, October 19th for a Gathering, Rally and March. The rally will start at 2pm at the Sudbury Secondary School, Sheridan Auditorium, which is at 154 College Street in downtown Sudbury.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS BELOW
and will be posted at: www.ocap.ca as well as here: https://www.facebook.com/RaiseTheRates

JOIN THE WEEK OF ACTION! If your organization wants to hold an event or if you are interested in finding out how you can get involved, contact us right away!

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) (416) 925-6939 ocap@tao.ca

CUPE Ontario Raise the Rates Campaign: www.cupe.on.ca/raisetherates

On Facebook, join the Raise the Rates page: https://www.facebook.com/RaiseTheRates
Twitter: @OCAPtoronto #RaisetheRates

TORONTO:

Saturday, October 12th:Feast for Fairness – Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage! Under the banner of “Poverty Wages? NO THANKS!” this event will be just one of many province-wide actions taking place around the Thanksgiving weekend calling for a $14 minimum wage, and in alliance with the Raise the Rates Week of Action from Oct. 14-20. https://www.facebook.com/events/150760811800205/

Wednesday, October 16th: Rally with Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty

Thursday, October 17th: Raise the Rates Rally at Ontario Ministry of Finance
When: Thursday, October 17 at 12 Noon

Where: Corner of College and University, Toronto

Saturday, October 19th: GET ON THE BUS TO SUDBURY! Leaving downtown Toronto at 8:30am, returning the same day. To register for
a seat on the bus email: ocap@tao.ca or call: 416-925-6939
(continue below)

Above, Picture of Drina's House in the 1960's

Download the Taking it Back Campaign Newsletter here

Sign on to the Statement of Demands here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/625/318/647/expropriate-230-sherbourne-dr...

On Sunday, September 22, about 250 members and supporters of OCAP, including a contingent of our comrades from Montreal, marched out of Allan Gardens in the opening action of the Taking it Back Campaign in Toronto’s Downtown East.
The community in which OCAP is based is under attack by the twin agendas of austerity driven social cutbacks and upscale urban redevelopment. Homeless shelters are full and the Seaton House hostel is threatened with the loss of over 400 beds. Low income housing stock in the neighbourhood has been lost on a huge scale and thousands of local people are part of a city wide waiting list for affordable housing that numbers over 165,000.

The Taking it Back Campaign will fight for adequate shelter space and for decent and accessible housing. It will demand that the buildings in the area that have been boarded up and left empty be expropriated by the City and turned into social housing. This has already been done in Parkdale with the building at 1495 Queen West and we demand it happen in the east end on a bigger scale.

Sign petition to expropriate Drina's House here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/625/318/647/expropriate-230-sherbourne-dr...


On December 17, 1985 Drina Joubert, a 41 year old homeless woman was found dead at the back of 230 Sherbourne Street. She was one of hundreds whose lives have been taken by homelessness and poverty. The building where she died was a rooming house as far back as the First World War and generations of poor people have called it home. For the last several years, it has stood empty as have many other such buildings in this area and through-out the City. While homeless shelters overflow and a housing crisis threatens to put ever more people on the streets, property owners board up buildings that could and should be housing people in need while they wait for an offer from a condo developer.

Cities in Ontario have the power to expropriate property and Toronto has previously used it to take back a neglected property at 1495 Queen Street West, which was opened as Edmund Place in 2011. We the undersigned are calling on the City of Toronto to expropriate 230 Sherbourne and the adjoining properties at 226 and 224 and to ensure that this space provide housing and services for poor people in this neighbourhood. Furthermore, it would be only fitting to name such a project on this site after the memory of one woman for whom housing came too late, Drina Joubert.

Gentrification steals neighbourhoods for essentially 2 reasons:

1. Simple Economics. Wealthier people move in. More people buy instead of renting. They renovate rooming houses into the mansions they once were. This all decreases rental housing stock, driving prices up. Added to this, landlords begin doubling or even tripling rents knowing they’ll easily find tenants who can afford them.

2. Social Cleansing. Time and again we’ve seen that most wealthy people don’t want to see poor people, drug users, or homeless folks in ‘their’ neighbourhoods. One developer was recently quoted in the Toronto Star saying, “The Modern literally touches that old crack doughnut shop [Coffee Time at Queen/Sherbourne]. There’s probably 300 condos in The Modern… Now 400 people are going to descend on the street – and you think they’re going to tolerate crackheads? They’re not.” This attitude is partly about intolerance of drug users but it’s also about seeing all poor people as undesirables undeserving of being in the neighbourhood that was once their own.

Gentrification is happening across Toronto, in Parkdale, Regent Park, The Junction – and anyone who’s been to Sherbourne/Dundas knows it’s well underway here too. Sherbourne/Dundas has become an island under seige in a sea of gentrification. To the east lie condos brought in through the Regent Park Redevelopment. From the south, condo developments encroach from Lakeshore all the way up north of Queen. Rosedale and its surrounding restored Victorian Mansions crowd down from the north and just west, the Yonge/Dundas Square redevelopment, combined with the sell off of federal government buildings at Dundas and Jarvis, have paved the way for multiple condo towers and luxury hotels.

Sunday, September 22nd, 2013
3pm
Allan Gardens Park, Toronto
*Meal, Gathering, March and Action

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/337571059707140

Voices from Toronto's Downtown East from OCAP on Vimeo.

The Downtown East area in Toronto is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. It is also a neighborhood experiencing rapid change as developers aim to buy up and redevelop the area. Governments are paving the way for gentrification by rolling out the red carpet for developers and by cutting vital services like shelters, drop-ins and programs.

As condos go up, rooming houses and single rooms are disappearing rapidly. When neighborhoods change, rent skyrockets. People are dying on the streets of this city because of a chronic lack of affordable and accessible housing. There are close to 90 000 households on a 10 year + long waiting list for social housing and shelters are operating over capacity. Conditions of overcrowding are at a breaking point in the shelter system as the City fails to conform to its own policy of keeping capacity no more than 90%. Meanwhile, jails and prisons - the only type of 'housing' the government is committing to expanding - fill up with people from the neighborhood.

Action is Needed!

Together we have fought for and won many things in this neighborhood over the years. We have stood our ground. On September 22nd we do so again and fight for the basic rights to health, comfort and dignity. We won’t watch the condo towers go up, and services be shut down, as houses sit abandoned, people die on the streets, are harassed in the parks, or are thrown in jails. They have been taking our community piece by piece – it’s time to take it back. Join us on the streets September 22nd, prepare to sleep out – help us fight for Housing, Shelter and Safe Space NOW!

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ACCESSIBILITY Information: All spaces and march route will be wheelchair accessible using all curb-cuts. A car (not wheelchair accessible) is available for those who need a break during the march. All meals will have meat and veggie options.

DOWNLOAD FLYER HERE!

August, 2013
Disabled people who have to rely on ODSP know what an inadequate and discriminatory system it is. You have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to get onto it and the level of income it provides comes nowhere close to meeting your basic needs. However, the Ontario Works (OW) system is even less adequate and even more insecure.

Last year, the Liberal Government commissioned a report proposing a merger of OW and ODSP into one program. While the government claims this will make the system easier to administer and easier to access, it is really about cutting benefits. We do not know exactly how a new program will work, it is likely that people with disabilities will get tax credits instead of benefits payments.

The proposal has also called for increased measures to reassess whether people would be accepted as having disabilities and it urged the Government to set up “employers councils” as well as new form of a participation agreement called “Pathway to Employment Plan.” Using friendly sounding language about “focusing on ability,” the government claims this is about making work more accessible. However, in reality we will see disabled people forced to compete for the lowest paying jobs. “Focusing on ability” also erases the discrimination that disabled people place and individualizes our[*/their] lack of inclusion. Many disabled people are unemployed because of discrimination and lack of accommodations not ‘ability.’

Extreme Heat Alerts and Homeless Shelters: Are you having to stay in a hot and overcrowded shelter this summer?

We are now in the season when Toronto experiences some very hot and humid weather. For those with access to air conditioning this is an irritation, but for homeless people on the streets or staying in overcrowded shelters, it is a much more serious situation. Recent levels of overcrowding have made the situation even more unhealthy and dangerous. Under intense community pressure throughout the winter and spring of this year, the City has agreed to keep shelter occupancy at a lower 90% but, until a new facility is opened up (which they say might be in the fall), they have been simply putting down additional 'flex beds' and cramming more people into shelters that are already beyond full. When the temperature climbs and humidity levels rise, these conditions become intolerable in facilities that have no air conditioning.

As heat alerts and extreme alerts are called, it is vital that action be taken to open more space and reduce the level of overcrowding during this summer period. If you are experiencing crowded conditions in an overheated shelter and want to challenge what is going on, then contact OCAP and we'll discuss what action can be taken.

*Download this flyer and please help distribute!

· If you have had trouble finding a bed, have been turned away from a shelter, have had experience with the ‘flex beds’, or have had to put up with unsafe, stressful or overcrowded conditions - we want to hear from you!

· If you have been staying outside but have experienced harassment from police or city officials – let us know!

· If you are a staff at a shelter or agency in the city and have had trouble finding someone a bed or have experienced the overcrowded conditions – we want to hear from you too!

We need your help to force the City to provide enough shelter space to ensure people have their right to safety and dignity respected.

Give us a call at (416) 925-6939 or e mail us at ocap@tao.ca.

The Raise the Rates Campaign represents a broad and growing consensus amongst community groups, unions and anti-poverty activists about social assistance in this province. Together we reject attempts to divide poor people on assistance between those on Ontario Works and those on Ontario Disability Support Program.  We are united in this fight and building alliances with all those living in poverty, people working low-wage precarious jobs, and unionized workers.
WE DEMAND:

1) Reverse the Cuts, Raise the Rates!
In 1995 the Tory government cut welfare rates by 21.6 % and froze disability. Since the Liberals came to power in 2003, they have not only failed to reverse the Harris cuts, but have actually perpetuated a further decline in rates. As a result of that initial 21.6% cut coupled with inflation for the last 16 years, welfare rates are approximately 55% below where they should be. If benefit levels were restored to the same level of spending power as we had in 1994, a single person on Ontario Works would receive an immediate $936/month instead of the miserable $606 now being issued. No one can survive on these poverty rates; $606 cannot afford someone a place to live let alone food and basic needs.
The Liberal government has frozen the minimum wage for last three years. Workers trying to survive on minimum wage are already making poverty wages that continue to lose their spending power as a result of inflation. Currently there are approximately 1 in 6 workers or working at or close to minimum wage in Ontario, and the gap between minimum wage and welfare is greater now than it ever has been.
WE DEMAND an immediate increase in OW and ODSP rates to bring them back to pre- Harris levels. 55% NOW– raise the rates to where people can live with health and dignity!
WE DEMAND the minimum wage freeze be lifted immediately and that minimum wage be increased to $14 for everyone in Ontario.

2) Restore Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit and the Special Diet Allowance!
The Liberals have cut two vital benefits that poor people need to survive. The Special Diet put healthy food on the table and the CSUMB kept a roof over people’s heads. We demand that these benefits be restored immediately.
In the 2012 Provincial budget, the Liberal government targeted the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB) for elimination by January 2013 and downloaded the responsibility of a housing fund to municipalities. This vital benefit allows people to get housed (first and last months rent, moving costs etc), pay for the basic essentials to set up a home (furniture, pots and pans), or recover from an emergency or crisis (the need to move for ones personal safety, or to pay for lost items due to a fire or bed bugs outbreak).
The Special Diet Allowance has been another vital benefit that has put money in the pockets of communities forced to live in poverty on social assistance rates that are entirely inadequate. The Liberals have been slowly chipping away at the Special Diet Allowance for the past 7 years making it harder and harder for people to qualify. The most recent proposal would see this benefit gone once and for all to ‘offset the cost’ of raising the base level of Ontario Works for singles by $100. The estimated cost of this cut in money would be: $240 million.
The loss of the full Special Diet Allowance and the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit alongside declining social assistance rates will drive communities deeper into poverty, poor health and will increase homelessness.
WE DEMAND the full restoration of the Special Diet to a benefit of up to $250 for food and complete reversal of all intrusive measures AND the full restoration of the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit as a provincially run program.

The Movement is growing: Join the Raise the Rates Campaign!
To get involved and to endorse the Raise the Rates Campaign, please visit: www.ocap.ca/rtr
CUPE Ontario Raise the Rates Campaign: www.cupe.on.ca/raisetherates
On Facebook, join the Raise the Rates page: https://www.facebook.com/RaiseTheRates

Or contact us at: Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
157 Carlton St, Unit 206, Toronto, ON M5A 2K3
Phone: 416-925-6939
Email: ocap@tao.ca
Twitter: @OCAPtoronto #RaisetheRates
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As little as $10 a month can help us maintain our work across this city and it just got easier to give.

For close to 20 years the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty has been at the forefront of community based resistance to regressive social policy from all levels of government. We have helped inspire numerous groups across this country and continent, been studied in universities and college programs and most importantly we have time after time organized poor communities to stand up and take what’s theirs. To fight for their dignity and for justice.

Today we are engaged day to day in the fight against City Hall, Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill. Making sure that repairs are done in community housing, fighting for each and every entitlement on welfare and disability and working to win fundamental changes that will mean better housing, more to eat and better social programs.

All of this continues to be carried out on a shoestring budget. Year after year we scrape by on the generosity of our members and supporters, primarily by those who answer our emergency appeals for cash when we are on the brink of laying off staff or closing our office. Our monthly expenses are by no means outrageous. We pay our staff what we can, cover basic bills and operate a small office. Every month we are thousands of dollars short of covering our expenses.

Our goal is to change all of that by the end of this year. We are looking for all supporters of our work to pitch in and help support the struggle by becoming a part of our monthly sustainers program. Please only donate what you can. Five dollars helps. Ten dollars helps. And if you can afford to give more please do.

To become a monthly sustainer, send a void cheque with amount and which date of the month you'd prefer it to be processed to:

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
157 Carlton, # 206,
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2K3

For more information call us at 416-925-6939 or email ocap@tao.ca.