Social service providers have proposal to save city $100 million

Social service providers have proposal to save city $100 million. Harvey Stein, the manager of homeless and housing help services at Woodgreen; Sarah Shartal, a lawyer who works with clients at drop-in centres in the city; Victor Willis, the executive director of the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre; and Greg Rogers, the executive director at the John Howard Society of Toronto announced a plan to save the city $100 million at a press conference July 27. Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD

The City Service Review Group, made up of representatives from the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC), Woodgreen and the John Howard Society of Toronto has, what they call, a Modest Proposal for the City of Toronto.

At a press conference held at PARC July 27, a panel comprised of Victor Willis, executive director of PARC; Harvey Stein, manager of homeless and housing help services at Woodgreen; Sarah Shartal, a lawyer who works with clients at drop-in centres in the city; and Greg Rogers, executive director at the John Howard Society of Toronto, said they have a plan to save the city one seventh of the money they need to make up the budget shortfall.

"If you follow the people, certainly people who are homeless or within the correctional system, if you follow the people, you follow the money," Willis said. "And we are proposing an alternative to that current pathway."

The group said they have worked the numbers and by removing the barriers and helping people go from Ontario Works (OW) program to Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) could save the city $100 million and that doesn't include the savings that would be seen by police and public health.

"We have been encouraged to have a debate about the value of taxes and I think one of the difficulties is as we cut taxes and as we look for gravy and try to have respect for taxpayers, we lose the idea of respect for citizens," Willis said. "What we want to do is have a different kind of conversation because it is not a race to the bottom and this is not about how little we should spend, it is about how appropriately we can allocate the resources that we have."

Essentially their plan entails uploading costs, which were previously downloaded by the province.

The ODSP is a provincial program that provides a monthly income of about $1,000 to people with serious prolonged disabilities, while Ontario Works is a general welfare program the provides $500 a month to able bodied people who are looking for work.

The City of Toronto pays to run shelters and it pays for the administration of the Ontario Works program, while the province pays for ODSP.

By providing the means to assist the people who should be on ODSP to navigate the paperwork and processes to get there, the group said the city could see real savings.

Sarah Shartal is a self-described "poor people's lawyer" with 13 years experience practising her street lawyering at clinics run out of drop-in centres such as PARC. She works with people with severe disabilities and, often, concurrent addictions issues.

These people should be on ODSP rather than OW, she said.

"To resolve a criminal charge, you need to have housing and you need to have some money. To resolve money, you also need to be able to sustain housing. All of those pieces interact with each other and all of my clients should be on ODSP and they should be out of the shelter system."

According to Shartal, the shelters have a concentration of "very chaotic people" on OW who have severe mental health and additions issues, who are unable to access the services they need so they end up breaking the law and ending up in prison.

"We warehouse them in shelters and then we warehouse them in prisons," she said.

Looking at the published numbers from the City of Toronto's shelter services and from its budget for OW, the group said it cost about $75 a night to keep someone in a shelter. Of that, the province pays $40 and the city pays the difference.

There are 1.5 million shelter nights paid for, 80 per cent of which are clients of places such as PARC and the John Howard Society. Also, the cost of administering OW is high because clients aren't housed and it's labour intensive to keep track of them, the group said.

"Using those two numbers alone, the per diems in the shelters and the 30 per cent of the OW costs, if those same people were assisted to get ODSP and helped to get into housing, the city would save $100 million a year," Shartal said. "And we think that number is underestimated.

In addition, when people with severe mental health and addictions issues are properly housed, Shartal said they have fewer problems with the police, which translate to even more savings.

"The point is that this is a lot of money," Shartal said. "This is a lot more money than shutting pools or arguing about the libraries."

Willis said in addition to the savings, the group said having the proper people on ODSP could pump $10 million back into neighbourhoods such as Parkdale in the form of rent and another $48 million to area businesses in incidentals.

However, with the type of individuals the group is talking about, services, such as social workers, must be in place in order to help them stay housed. Therefore, an investment of $8 to $10 million would be needed by the city to ensure people stay housed and the overall savings are maintained, Willis said.