Name 14 December 2012

Address information

City Postal

Dear Liberal Leadership Candidate,

We are writing to ask you to stateyour position on the elimination of the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB) for people receiving social assistance.

In March 2012, your government announced that CSUMB would be eliminated. This critical benefit, which ensures people receiving social assistance can find or keep housing, ends December 31.

The decision to eliminate the benefit and move half its current funding to theCommunity Homelessness Prevention Initiative (CHPI)is problematic in a number of ways:

  • Eliminating this benefit is a direct cut toprograms that have endured significant erosion over nearly twenty years. Despite the recent 2.7% increase to the budget of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in a time of budget tightening, benefit rates have been eroded in real terms since the late 1990s. The real need among individuals and families is nowhere near being met.
  • People receiving assistance will lose a targeted, mandatorybenefitand the appeal rights that this entails. As such, there will be no remedy for poor decision making on applications for funding, and no oversight except through judicial review by the courts. The move to eliminate the benefit will therefore not only cause more hardship, it will also reduce access to justice for low-income people in Ontario.
  • While it is clearly important that this type of support be made available to other low-income people in Ontario, removing CSUMB from the social assistance system and allocating only half the money to provide for the needs of all low-income people in a given communityis not an appropriate response to the needs of people outside the social assistance system.
  • The impact on people will be different depending on where in the province they live. Some municipalities are putting in place replacement programs on an interim basis; however, many are finding that they will have significantly less money to assist low-income people in their communities. And because the new CHPI is intended to provide greater local flexibility, each municipality is responding in a different way. In a system that has long been criticized for a patchwork of discretionary benefits available in different areas of the province, increasing that patchwork is entirely inappropriate.

  • The method of allocating former CSUMB money for the CHPI program is exacerbating the loss of half the funding. Using 2006 Census data on households in Deep Core Housing Need as the allocation metric is highly inappropriate. Housing need primarily reflects housing affordability in a given area, whereas CSUMB use is not necessarily connected to housing affordability. This is an indication that the inclusion of CSUMB in the CHPI program is inappropriate.
  • Municipalities are not required to have their Local Housing and Homelessness Plans in place until January 1, 2014. This means they will be administering programs for a full year without having done the planning required to know what their local needs are. Municipalities are therefore trying to find interim solutions and fund interim programs, which will mean that people are going to fall through the cracks.

In 2008, the Liberal governmentmade a historic commitment to reducing poverty in Ontario by creating the first-ever Poverty Reduction Strategyfor the province. The elimination of CSUMB undermines that commitment. It also undermines expectations that this government’s intentions for the review of social assistance are to make positive reforms.Indeed, eliminating this benefit is a clear signal that there is little hope for providing adequately for the needs of people receiving social assistance.

A recent Toronto Star editorial on the elimination of CSUMB notes that,

“To govern is to choose among a host of competing programs crying for public dollars. That’s especially true in hard times, like these, when money is in scarce supply. And regardless of the way it’s spun — in a news release, or by a PR flack — how a government chooses lays bare its true priorities.”

Asyou areseeking tolead the Liberal Party of Ontario – andfrom that position to lead the peopleof Ontario –people facing financial hardshipneed to knowif the elimination of this benefit demonstrates your priorities.We ask you to confirm whether or not you will restore the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit within the Ministry of Community and Social Services if you become Liberal leader and the next Premier of Ontario.We look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

Mary E. MarroneKenneth Hale

Director of Advocacy & Legal ServicesDirector of Advocacy & Legal Services

Income Security Advocacy Centre (ISAC)Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO)

c/o 425 Adelaide Street West, 5th floor

Toronto, ON M5V 3C1

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