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Jan. 2, 2005. 01:00 AM
The poor haven't changed — we have
LINDA MCQUAIG
In recent years, the word "underprivileged" has fallen out of use.
Too bad; the word was helpful. It captured the fact that what separated the
poor from the rest of society was mostly just privilege — the advantage of
being born into the right family. In other words, luck had a lot to do with
where one ended up in life.
This fundamental realization helped foster an attitude of sympathy and
generosity towards the poor. After all, they were seen as being just like
everyone else, only less lucky. So it seemed fair that society should
provide them with some support, to make up at least partly for the
headstart the rest of us got.
This sort of approach has been brusquely pushed aside in the last two
decades, replaced by an aggressive new right-wing ideology with a much
harsher attitude towards the poor.
According to this new ideology, the rich are rich because they've
contributed more to society, and they therefore deserve their big fortunes.
(Many rich people find considerable merit in this theory). Similarly, the
new ideology holds that the poor are poor due to their own shortcomings,
perhaps laziness or some other character defect.
Thus, the role of privilege — while more pronounced than ever in the lives
of the rich and more lacking in the lives of the poor — has been airbrushed
out of the picture. Our willingness to embrace this new ideology explains
why our streets are increasingly filled with homeless people. The poor
haven't changed; we've changed. Egged on by this new mean-spirited
ideology, we've kicked the supports out from under them.
Indeed, from the point of view of the poor, what we've delivered in the
past two decades amounts to a series of body blows.
Most devastating were the deep cuts made to provincial welfare payments in
1995 by Mike Harris' Conservative government. This blow was compounded by
the fact that both Ottawa and Ontario cut off funding for new social
housing in the 1990s.
This left Ontario's poor, now with even smaller incomes than before, at the
mercy of the private rental housing market — where they faced ever-rising
rents and little security. Then in 1998, the Harris government made their
situation even more precarious by eliminating crucial rent control
protections.
So, while we as a society have grown collectively much richer over the past
two decades, we've played Russian roulette with the fate of the most
vulnerable members of society. When large numbers of them have ended up
faring badly — indeed living on our sidewalks — we've mostly just stepped
over them, seeing in their blanket-wrapped idleness proof of the validity
of the new ideology.
Despite massive budget surpluses in recent years, Ottawa has been slow to
restore what it took away. Cathy Crowe, of the Toronto Disaster Relief
Committee, says however that Ottawa is at least willing to listen. By
contrast, she says, the key ministers in Dalton McGuinty's government in
Ontario refuse to even meet with her committee. Ontario remains tied in
last place (with Newfoundland and Labrador) for the province that spends
the least on social housing, Crowe says.
Ironically, the new right-wing ideology may ultimately be more expensive.
To prevent the poor from actually freezing to death in large numbers, we've
maintained a crude, barebones shelter system where they can sleep overnight
in grim, crowded dormitories.
But the shelter system turns out to be more expensive than providing the
poor with rental supplements.
According to a city housing report, rental supplements — which allow the
poor to live in regular apartments — cost $11,631 a year per person. The
cost of a keeping someone in a shelter is about 40 per cent higher —
$16,156 a year. The city figured this out when it set up an emergency
program that provided rental supplements for more than a hundred homeless
people who'd been evicted from the tent city where they'd been living near
the city's waterfront.
A follow-up study last spring determined that 89 per cent of this hardcore
homeless crowd were still living in their rental housing a year and a half
later, and costing the system substantially less than if they'd been
drifting in and out of shelters. Furthermore, they were eating better,
returning to school, even finding jobs. In other words, with a little bit
of support, they were actually making significant strides at overcoming
their "underprivileged" backgrounds.
So it seems that our keen embrace of right-wing ideology in the past two
decades may not only be mean, but also stupid — unless our goal is to
punish the poor, in which case we're doing a very fine job.
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Linda McQuaig is a Toronto-based author and commentator.
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