November 11, 2013
From : 1-3pm

South Riverdale Community Health Centre
955 Queen Street East

The Housing Stabilization Fund was created in the city of Toronto to replace the loss of the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB). The Housing Stabilization Fund is for people on social assistance, ODSP or OW. It can help with first and last month’s rent to get housing, rental arrears, furniture and household items, moving expenses, hydro arrears and more. We will be hosting an application clinic in the east end at South Riverdale Community Health Centre. People applying should bring (if they have), ID and worker information,
and any supporting documents like bills, eviction notice, promise to rent.

For more information call 416-461-1925 ext 247 or email zdodd@srchc.com

Raise the Rates! Restore CSUMB!

Communities united in fighting attack on Disability Benefits!

*See the Resolution to fight the ODSP/OW merger, Adopted by the Raise the Rates assembly, here: http://ocap.ca/node/1107

*See the joint Statement with Mamaweswen here: http://ocap.ca/node/1108

OCAP was proud to participate in the Raise the Rates Week of Action with a range of community and union allies. Linking up with the Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage, we held actions in a range of Ontario cities and towns. People mobilized to demand living wages, decent income, a Raise in the Rates of Social Assistance, and the reversal of austerity based cuts like the elimination of the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB). Through determined community mobilization last year, we forced $42 million out of the government in what was meant to be CSUMB funding. That funding runs out at the end of this year, and so the call to restore CSUMB is timely and vital.

Above all, we challenged impending measures to attack disabled people on ODSP through the government’s proposal to merge ODSP with Ontario Works (OW).

Resolution Adapted at the Raise the Rates Assembly in Sudbury on October 19, 2013- read here:
http://ocap.ca/node/1107

Joint Statement by Mamaweswen, the North Shore Tribal Council and the Raise the Rates Campaign, read Here:
http://ocap.ca/node/1108

*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!

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OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union) Joins on to the Raise the Rates Campaign, supports the week of actions against the Ontario Goverment!
http://www.opseu.org/notices/raisetheminimumwage/raise-the-rates-campaig...
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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.

Thursday, October 10th, 2013.

Urgent Action Needed: Women's Shelter Crisis Risks Lives and Safety
Where: Metro Hall, 6th Floor, 55 John St.

On Sunday, September 22, 2013, between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., a homeless woman
was sitting on some steps in the Dundas Street East and Sherbourne Street
area. She was sexually assaulted by two different men that same night.

Homeless women in this city are subjected to violence and dangerous
conditions with nowhere to turn for shelter or support. For too many
women, seeking out a shelter bed on any given night is a futile act as
there are no beds in the system. Specially designated ‘Violence Against
Women’ shelters, mandated to provide safe spaces for women fleeing
violence, are often full. Women looking for shelter are told to wait at
Peter Street for beds that do not materialize. Sometimes they are even
turned away from Peter St. due to overcrowding.

The city’s shelters are overcrowded and the crisis of homelessness is
continuing to worsen. It is certain that the colder weather will only make
this situation even more desperate. City Council voted to bring shelter
occupancy rates down to 90% but they have failed to keep their promise.
Instead of taking real action, the city has thrown some mats on floors of
shelters, called them ‘flex beds’ and hoped that would stop the public
outcry about shelter overcrowding.

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.

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.

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.

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OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union) Joins on to the Raise the Rates Campaign!
http://www.opseu.org/notices/raisetheminimumwage/raise-the-rates-campaig...
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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.