Windsor-Essex Voices Against Poverty, since forming in the late Spring of 2009, have been working to raise public awareness about the experiences of people living in poverty. They are also proposing concrete solutions that will lift people out of poverty. The Voices group has been working collaboratively with Pathway to Potential, as well as with provincial advocacy groups, to engage the broader community in a collective poverty reduction effort.
SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REVIEW
It's time for a review of social assistance that results in the kind of transformation that promotes economic security - because that's how poverty will be reduced.
E-mail the Government About the Social Assistance Review
INCLUSIONARY HOUSING: CREATING AFFORDABLE HOUSING BY HARNESSING THE POWER OF PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT
Inclusionary housing programs are
municipal programs that rely upon the development regulations and approval
process to have private developers provide some portion of the housing within
their new market projects as affordable
housing.
This is a proven tool in the United States that has created tens of thousands
of affordable housing units in hundreds of big cities and small towns as diverse
as Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and
Burlington, Vermont. These communities have implemented
programs that have increased the supply of affordable housing, engaged a
development industry that still makes a healthy return on investment, and
created healthy, diverse, vibrant neighbourhoods.
The Inclusionary Housing Working Group (a project of the
Wellesley Institute) has created a web site that has a lot of great information
about how Inclusionary Housing works and is calling on the province of Ontario to make Inclusionary Housing a
part of the Long Term Affordable Housing Strategy.
Visit the web site at:
www.inclusionaryhousing.ca
While you are there
send a message
to Jim Bradley, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, indicating your
support for Inclusionary Housing. And
become
an endorser of the Inclusionary Housing Working Group's
statement.
REINSTATE THE SPECIAL DIET ALLOWANCE
As you may have already
heard, in the recent Provincial budget the McGuinty Government has announced
that they will be cutting the special diet allowance for people on social
assistance. This will reduce the income available to over
160,000 low income people in Ontario whose doctors have verified that they
need special diets to manage their health problems. Some new form of
nutritional supplementation will be provided through the Ministry of Health, but
the Minister of Community and Social Services has made clear that many people
now getting special diet help will not get anything under the new program. If you would like to see the Special Diet Allowance reinstated, contact your MPP to let them know that this decision will be detrimental
to the health of many people on social assistance, and must be reversed.
Below you will find template letters that you can send to your MPP:
If you are a community member living in the riding of a Liberal MPP,
click here
If you are a community member living in the riding of an Opposition MPP,
click here
If you are a Special Diet Recipient living in the riding of a Liberal MPP,
click here
If you are a Special Diet Recipient living in the riding of an Opposition MPP,
click here
