Category: **ESPC News and Announcements

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 12, 2020

EDMONTON – A new report released by the Edmonton Social Planning Council shows that the toll of households placed on long waiting lists for rental assistance is high and action is urgently needed.

The High Cost of Waiting: Tenant-Focused Solutions to Enhance Housing Affordability sets out to document the impacts on quality of life for households who have to wait for prolonged periods of time and find the best solutions for reducing wait times and improving housing affordability. Excessively long waits for affordable rental accommodations has been one of the most intractable challenges facing low income Edmonton households.

“Long wait times forces many people to pay market rents for housing they can’t afford, or to live in units that substandard, unsafe or overcrowded,” says John Kolkman, Research Associate for the Edmonton Social Planning Council and principal author of the report. About 100 people currently on the Capital Region Housing wait list attended focus groups and provided email responses describing their experiences of having to wait in many cases for years to obtain help paying their rents, and the toll this is taking on their mental and financial health.

“We heard that the stress of having to wait for assistance and the financial worries of having to provide for their families had enormous negative impacts on their quality of life,” says Kolkman. “In some cases people became homeless while waiting and more many are at severe risk of becoming homeless.”

The report notes the federal government is proposing a Canada Housing Benefit with matching federal and provincial dollars as a key component of a National Housing Strategy. The ESPC report contains specific recommendations on how such a benefit should be funded and designed to best shrink wait lists. Funding should be sufficient to allow all households who qualify based on their household income receive rental assistance on a timely basis, similar to what is currently the norm for existing programs like child care subsidies and income support.

Nevertheless, there is uncertainty about the Alberta government’s commitment to its share of the funding. “Instead of cost-matching, the 24% cut in rental assistance announced in the October 2019 Alberta Budget suggests that the province is planning to use the new federal dollars to replace at least some existing provincial dollars,” says Kolkman. “Without proper funding from both orders of government, the effectiveness in reducing wait times of those being forced to wait will be severely compromised.”

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Download the Report – THE HIGH COST OF WAITING Tenant-Focused Solutions to Enhance Housing Affordability

Media Contact:

Brett Lambert, Community Engagement Coordinator,

Edmonton Social Planning Council

Phone: (780) 423-2031, ext. 351 E-mail: BrettL@edmontonsocialplanning.ca 

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EDMONTON – The Alberta College of Social Workers, Edmonton Social Planning Council, and Public Interest Alberta have jointly released a report on the state of child and family poverty in Alberta called ” Invest in Families: Ending Child Poverty is Good for All .”

Click to download: Invest In Families: Ending Child Poverty Is Good For All

Click to download: Invest In Families: Ending Child Poverty, Is Good For All (One Page Summary)

In Alberta, 1 in 6 children live below the poverty line. The report focuses on the impacts of poverty on the development of children, and its wide-ranging detrimental effects, including issues affecting mental health, educational attainment, employment, and housing throughout their lives up to adulthood.

The report demonstrates that investment into Alberta’s families, including child benefits, nutrition programs, affordable housing, and subsidized, quality child care, are the key to ending the cycles of poverty that end up blocking children from living lives of dignity where they’re able to thrive.

“Child care for a family is one of the biggest household expenses, which can be as high as 67% of their monthly income,” Sandra Ngo, the Research Coordinator at the Edmonton Social Planning Council said, “This makes it extremely difficult for a family to afford nutritious food, housing, education, and other essentials. Creating a universal and affordable, quality child care program would be a game changer for children and their parents.”

The report clearly demonstrates that ending child poverty is a moral imperative for Alberta. Investing now in Alberta’s families means a better province for everyone.

“The need to address child poverty continues to be a topic for all Albertans to care about,” said Ajay Hartenfeld Pandhi, President of the Alberta College of Social Workers. “Among all the economic discussions underway, let this topic be one that stands out as a priority in our decision making.”

The report comes at a critical time when the provincial government is making sweeping cuts to social programs, and freezing the minimum wage.

“The provincial government is headed in the wrong direction with many of their cuts to social programs and by, for the first time since 2010, freezing the minimum wage,” said Joel French, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta, “These cuts and freezes directly impact the most vulnerable people and families in the province. We owe it to the children of this province to take immediate action. Investments into social programs and public services including subsidized quality child care, a universal pharmacare program, and indexing of financial supports for those earning low incomes will go a long way to achieving that.”

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Media Contacts

Brett Lambert, Community Engagement Coordinator, Edmonton Social Planning Council

(780) 423-2031 ext. 351 BrettL@edmontonsocialplanning.ca

Lynn Labrecque King, Executive Direction and Registrar, Alberta College of Social Workers

(780) 421-1167 ext. 226 executivedirector@acsw.ab.ca

Laura Kruse, Communications Officer, Public Interest Alberta

587-568-2792 (cell) 780-420-0471 (office) communications@pialberta.org 

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