The percentage of disabled people relying on food banks in the GTA has almost doubled since 2005.
ah
/ Aaron Harris/Toronto Star
The percentage of disabled people lining up at food banks has almost
doubled since 2005, the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Who’s Hungry report
states.
Being disabled is
increasingly a trigger for poverty and hunger, according to a new report
profiling food bank clients across the GTA.
The percentage of
disabled people lining up at food banks has almost doubled since 2005,
the Daily Bread Food Bank’s Who’s Hungry report states.
Disability
beneficiaries receive so little money from Ontario’s social welfare
programs they are forced to live in poverty, Daily Bread executive
director Gail Nyberg said.
The steadily
increasing number of Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP)
recipients relying on food banks is a concerning trend, she said.
“It should be disturbing to anyone living in the province.”
In 2005, 17 per cent
of food bank clients were receiving ODSP — this number has now climbed
to 28 per cent, according to the report.
Why are more and more
disability beneficiaries accessing food banks across the GTA? It is
likely because the ODSP monthly allowance has increased by only $156 in
the past 19 years.
Disability
beneficiaries receive $1086 a month under ODSP and this is set to
increase to $1098 on Oct. 1, under the latest provincial government
budget.
The ODSP allowance has
not kept up with inflation since former premier Mike Harris’
social-welfare reforms froze the amount at $930 in 1995.
Today’s social welfare program pays “poverty-level benefits,” Daily Bread researcher Richard Matern, who wrote the report, said.
Five years ago,
disability beneficiaries were leading fairly comfortable lives and able
to pay rent and feed themselves, he said. “That adequacy has gone and
this year it has become very apparent.”
ODSP was intended to
be a social support program of last resort, but with increased pressure
on the labour market and reduced access to disability income
protections, it is fast becoming the only option.
Neither ODSP nor the
general welfare benefit, Ontario Works (OW), has an allowance sufficient
enough to cover basic necessities, including food, the report states.
Both ODSP and OW fall below Canadian poverty levels.
More than a third of
the food bank clients surveyed for the report said there had been at
least one day in the last year in which they did not eat at all.
Welfare recipient and
burn victim Harry Sorensen, 52, told the Star he did not eat a single
thing on Tuesday, because he could not afford it.
The former handyman
was burnt with acid while trying to unblock an elderly man’s drain pipe
about four years ago. His injuries left him unable to lift heavy objects
and in continuous pain.
He receives $626 a
month through OW and said he was still trying to meet the threshold to
access ODSP. Sorensen said he had lost at least 20 pounds since he
became reliant on social welfare.
In exchange for the free food he receives, Sorensen volunteers by tending to the gardens at Daily Bread once a week.
He pays $400 a month
on rent for his one-bedroom basement apartment in Toronto and the rest
of his allowance is usually spent paying back friends he borrowed money
from the previous month.
“I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got left, but it’s not much,” he said.
ODSP Action Coalition
co-chair Kyle Vose, who is also an ODSP recipient, said the allowance
was “an insult” to the disabled. “Even if you’re on ODSP you are still
living in squalor, dependent on food banks and people’s donations,” he
said.
Facts on disability and poverty
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