Thank you.
I really am grateful for this opportunity to express my thoughts on reducing poverty. I really appreciate your giving me an opportunity this afternoon. I should have been here this morning, but...things come up.
Many have used the term “cycle of poverty”. During the 60 years I have spent working with the poor, I have seen the cycle perpetuate itself from a great-grandmother through the whole line to the great-great-grandchild still living in poverty.
When operating day care centres in the poorest areas of the south Bronx and the lower east side of Manhattan, I could see children come in at two-and-a-half and three years of age being fearful, seeming depressed, lethargic, and lacking any enthusiasm or curiosity. Many of the single moms had been pressured to put the child in day care and get a job. Too often her minimum-wage job would barely pay her rent and would deprive her and her child of health insurance.
No one seemed to recognize the child would have been better off if the mother had been allowed to stay home and been able to feel the comfort of caring for and teaching her child during its earliest years of growth. Unfortunately, our societies do not respect or value good parenting, but seem to look only at budgets' bottom lines.
There must be thousands of books on child development. All of them emphasize how critically important the earliest years of our lives are for the development of a physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy person. An abundant amount of tender loving care, adequate nourishment, health care, and stimulating activities are some of the most basic needs of infants and those below seven years of age.
My religious community has been in the area I am working in now in the downtown east side of Vancouver since 1926. Throughout the years, we have responded to the needs of the changing populations, starting with the Japanese. Now we are operating a soup line five days a week for 500 to 600 mostly homeless men and women.
I ask myself, what happened in their early life? What happened that has brought them to this situation where they do not have a roof over their heads?
I am also on the board of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, and we do operate three social housing buildings, about 600 units. Both we and DERA have been pushing for social housing to be built for years. The province has not built any social housing since the mid-nineties. No one on B.C.'s minimum income of $8 an hour can afford even a one-bedroom apartment, where the rent is close to $1,500 a month. Families are going to shelters. What a totally destructive situation for families with small children to live and grow in.
Last year a father came to our door to beg for help. He had an $18-an-hour job and lived in a very small one-bedroom apartment with his wife and infant daughter and 15-year-old son. His rent, the very cheapest he could find, was $1,300 a month. With all his other expenses, he was finding it hard to buy enough food.
The financial pressure, inadequate space for the growing families of the poor, take a very high toll on their ability to feel secure. The children, especially the youngest, feel the pressure, and believe they are part of the problem. I have heard a child, four years old, say, “If only I were died, everything would be okay.” The child committed suicide when he was 15.
That can be the beginning of mental problems, especially depression. With the dire need for social housing being ignored by the federal government, we are creating more and more problems, especially for the children of low-income families as well as all of those on assistance. In Vancouver there are very few programs for after-school children, and even fewer for high school youngsters.
Besides building social housing with some two- or three-bedroom units, I would suggest getting a living wage bill. People cannot live on the pittance, certainly, that the minimum wage requires. Some, especially the immigrants, just to get something to do--some work, some money--have been known to work for $5 an hour. They work long hours, with no overtime and no benefits.
We are forced into criminality.
Raising the public assistance allotment is also a reasonable demand.
Whatever is done, the emphasis must be on what is beneficial for families with children. Children are our future.
Thank you.