jillumbach Advocacy, General Information, Partner Activities, Research

Dealing with the cost of utilities in Bruce Grey_a new report

15 October 2013

A recent report by Bruce and Grey Counties summarizes the changes in job security and the impact of the rising cost of utilities.

It is estimated that about 1 in 3 Canadians live pay cheque to pay cheque and support service agencies in Bruce and Grey Counties find that most of the people they serve fall into this category. This means that a sudden change in a household’s situation, such as job loss, sickness or family break-up, can easily lead to housing affordability issues, including utility arrears.

Poverty is a root cause for this precarious position and the rising cost of utilities is yet one more issue that households in poverty have to cope with.

In Bruce and Grey Counties, the face of poverty is changing – service providers are starting to see seniors who are facing challenges and this was not the case in the past. While many seniors no longer have a mortgage on their home, many have modest, fixed incomes that are no longer sufficient to cover the rising costs of maintaining their homes, including utilities. Some seniors are particularly affected and anecdotal accounts have reported seniors going to bed in snow suits, using barbeques in their kitchens or reducing food purchases as a way to cope with utility costs. Many people refuse to ask for help with their utilities until the situation is quite dire, which in turn requires more community resources to resolve.

Recent data on service inquiries underscore the growing impact of utility issues. Community Connection/Ontario 211 receives calls and provides information on the services available in local communities. In 2012, the agency received a total of 2,401 call related to housing need from Grey County residents. Of these, 79% (1,895 calls) were related to utility arrears. Similarly, the agency received a total of 1,060 calls from Bruce County residents and 86% (919 calls) were related to utility arrears.

The issue of utility arrears affects the whole community and addressing it requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholders, including support service agencies, governments, utility providers and the clients themselves. Workshop participants proposed a number of solutions to help address the issue of utility arrears in Bruce and Grey Counties. The challenge ahead is how to advance possible solutions and make progress in alleviating utility arrears issues.

As part of the workshop, participants suggested possible next steps, including:
• Continue to meet on this issue and engage other stakeholders, such as the Legal Clinic and Poverty Task Force
• Increase political awareness on the issue
• Undertake educational activities for clients, including workshops and developing educational material
• Advocate for additional LEAP and CHPI funding
• Fundraise in the community

See the full report: Utilities Workshop – What We Heard Utility Workshop FINAL October 3, 2013

jillumbach Advocacy, Media, Research

Poverty is a Health Issue: What to look for in the next Poverty Reduction Strategy

September 24, 2013 by 

Living on a low income affects people’s lives in many ways. It can mean having fewer opportunities to fully participate in important day-to-day activities like work and education. But living on a low income can also contribute to having poorer health than those who are better off. Poverty is a health issue, but poverty and poor health are not inevitable.

Ontario is currently working on a new five-year Poverty Reduction Strategy. This provides an excellent opportunity for the province to set out their concrete steps to reduce poverty in the short- and medium-term. A new Wellesley Institute report details how the province can improve the health of all Ontarians by reducing poverty. This is the first in a series of three blogs that set out how to create a Poverty Reduction Strategy that enables good health for all.

Income security

Ensuring that all Ontarians have adequate income is critical to achieving the Poverty Reduction Strategy’s goals. Employment should be a path out of poverty, but we know that many employed Ontarians are unable to afford basic necessities and that this can have negative health impacts.

One area that needs urgent attention is Ontario’s minimum wage. The minimum wage has been frozen at $10.25 since 2010 and there are a growing number of Ontarians who are ‘working poor’. Working poverty can have serious health impacts: Ontario data show that 66 percent of people who were working and made sufficient incomes reported their health as excellent or very good as compared with 49 percent of those who were working poor. Setting the minimum wage at 10 percent above the poverty line and indexing it to inflation will be good for the health of Ontarians.

The Ontario Employment Standards Act sets out the minimum terms and conditions that all employees can expect with regard to wages and other working conditions. These standards are important to all workers, but they are especially so for marginalized workers who are least able to negotiate fair wages and working conditions for themselves. Ensuring that people get paid for the work that they do, and that their pay is in compliance with the law is an effective way to reduce poverty. The Poverty Reduction Strategy should commit to improving enforcement and modernizing the Employment Standards Act.

Increasingly, Ontarians are finding themselves in low-wage work without security or benefits. Precarious forms of employment – like part-time, contract positions that do not offer benefits – are on the rise. Many of these jobs are in the service sector where it is very difficult for employees to choose to unionize and to keep their union once they have decided to join one. Ontario’s Labour Relations Act needs to be updated to reflect the changing structure of the labour market. The Poverty Reduction Strategy should update the Labour Relations Act to protect workers’ collective bargaining rights.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy also needs to address the adequacy of social assistance rates. Social assistance rates are currently set at levels that are too low for recipients to maintain good health. Last year, the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario recommended the creation of a Basic Measure of Adequacy that included the cost of food, clothing and footwear, basic personal and household needs, transportation, and shelter. The Poverty Reduction Strategy should commit to ensuring that social assistance rates are set at a level that allows recipients to afford these basic necessities of life.

These are four areas of action in which policy solutions to improve income security are well-know, actionable and supported by research. The new Poverty Reduction Strategy should take action in these areas to improve the incomes – and health – of all Ontarians.

jillumbach Advocacy, Media, Research

Poverty impairs cognitive function

Media Release | August 29, 2013

A new report released this week in Science journal directs us to change our thinking.  Going forward, it means that anti-poverty programs could have a huge benefit that we’ve never recognized before: Help people become more financially stable, and you also free up their cognitive resources to succeed in all kinds of other ways as well.

For all the value in this finding, it’s easy to imagine how proponents of hackneyed arguments about poverty might twist the fundamental relationship between cause-and-effect here. If living in poverty is the equivalent of losing 13 points in IQ, doesn’t that mean people with lower IQs wind up in poverty?

“We’ve definitely worried about that,” Shafir says. Science, though, is coalescing around the opposite explanation. “All the data shows it isn’t about poor people, it’s about people who happen to be in poverty. All the data suggests it is not the person, it’s the context they’re inhabiting.”

poverty-1-770.jpg (770×350)

Poverty consumes so much mental energy that those in poor circumstances have little remaining brainpower to concentrate on other areas of life, new research finds. As a result, those with few resources are more likely to make bad decisions that perpetuate their financial woes.

Published in the journal Science, the study suggests our cognitive abilities can be diminished by the exhausting effort of tasks like scrounging to pay bills. As a result, less “mental bandwidth” remains for education, training, time-management, and other steps that could help break out of the cycles of poverty.

Jiaying Zhao

UBC Prof. Jiaying Zhao

“Previous accounts of poverty have blamed the poor for their personal failings, or an environment that is not conducive to success,” said lead author Jiaying Zhao, a University of British Columbia professor who conducted the study as a graduate student at Princeton University. “We’re arguing that being poor can impair cognitive functioning, which hinders individuals’ ability to make good decisions and can cause further poverty.”

In one set of experiments, the researchers found that pressing financial concerns had an immediate negative impact on the ability of low-income individuals to perform on common cognitive and logic tests. On average, a person preoccupied with money problems exhibited a drop in cognitive function similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep.

In another series of field experiments, the researchers found that farmers show diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest, compared to after when they had greater wealth. These differences in cognitive functioning could not be explained by differences in nutrition, physical exertion, time availability or stress. According to the study, the mental strain of poverty differs from stress, which can actually enhance a person’s functioning in certain situations.

Background

Zhao’s study co-authors include Eldar Shafir (Princeton University), Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard University) and Anandi Mani (University of Warwick). The paper, “Poverty impedes cognitive function,” was published online Aug. 29 by Science and is available upon request.

According to Shafir, the fallout of neglecting other areas of life may loom larger for a person just scraping by. Late fees tacked on to a forgotten rent, a job lost because of poor time-management — these make an already-tight money situation worse. And as people get poorer, they tend to make desperate decisions, such as excessive borrowing, that further perpetuate their hardship, he says.

The researchers suggest that services for the poor should better accommodate the strain that poverty places on a person’s mind. Such measures would include simpler aid forms and more guidance to receiving assistance, or training and educational programs structured so that missed classes aren’t as detrimental.

“When [people living in poverty] make mistakes, the outcomes of errors are more dear,” says Shafir. “So, if you are poor, you’re more error prone and errors cost you more dearly — it’s hard to find a way out.”

Jiaying Zhao is UBC’s Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability and a professor in the Dept. of Psychology and Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

jillumbach Advocacy, Media, Partner Activities, Resources, Video

Grey Bruce: Poverty Outside the City

In December 2012, TVO participated in an international, cross-media series called “Why Poverty?” that tried to ask why, in the 21st century, poverty remains such a problem all around the world.

One of the spots is entitled “Grey Bruce: Poverty Outside the City.”  The Agenda spoke to three people, two involved in charities -the United Way of Grey Bruce  and the Adult Learning Centre –  one person who has struggled on low income, about the challenges faced by the less fortunate in Grey and Bruce counties.

http://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/grey-bruce-poverty-outside-city

While the spot is specifically focused on Grey and Bruce counties, it serves as a window to the kinds of particular circumstances both those in need and the charities that try to help them encounter in a large, far-flung rural community.

The video was a new experience for The Agenda, since they conducted all the interviews via webcam and used still digital images to complement the interview clips. While The Agenda team acknowledged the video quality was not the best, they felt it was a way to profile people that they might not have otherwise been able to showcase given time and budget constraints.

If you’re interested, you can watch and read all The Agenda’s “Why Poverty?” content in one spot.