The annual income needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto is $38,000 yet the average annual income of an adult in the low-income bracket is less than $20,778, according to January 2011 figures from the city.
Toronto's classes are becoming increasingly divided, according to David Hulchanski, the associate director for research at the University of Toronto's Cities Centre and professor of housing and development in the Factor-Intenwash Faculty of Social Work. "We call ourselves, in this city, a middle class society, but there's a problem with that," Hulchanski said, as a guest speaker at a symposium on poverty, housing and homelessness at city hall, Friday morning, March 4. "Up to the 1980s, the middle class and middle income, the vast majority could afford what society had to offer, either renting or buying a house or owning a car. We still call ourselves the middle class, but we're not middle income. The City of Toronto was 66 per cent middle income in the 1970s and '80s, but now it's less than 30 per cent."The poverty, housing and homelessness symposium was hosted by Davenport Councillor Ana Bailao, who was appointed the new affordable housing committee chair, in conjunction with the Toronto Board of Trade and the United Way Toronto. How did we get here, asked Hulchanski, author of the recent report The Three Cities within Toronto: Income polarization among Toronto's neighbourhoods, 1970-2005. "The provincial and federal governments - we went in the wrong direction," said Hulchanski, whose research is focused on housing, homelessness, neighbourhood change and social policy.He cited such categories as income strategies, discrimination in employment and education and labour market strategy as examples of where the government lost its way. "We've gone the wrong way," he said, however not all is lost. "We created this, we can get out of it."Initiatives like inclusory housing, rental building rehabilitation and the creation of rapid transit in the outer reaches of suburban Toronto like Scarborough need to take place. Guest speaker Gail Nyberg, executive director of the Daily Bread Food Bank, said a food bank user once told her, 'Y'know, living in poverty is like a full time job, trying to find enough food, to figuring out how you're going to pay your bills.'That's why the food bank, said Nyberg, who was instrumental in challenging the provincial government to support a full poverty reduction strategy and implement the Ontario Child Benefit in 2007, decided to focus on housing and specifically the need for a housing benefit. Also key, said Nyberg, is changing people's perspectives. According to a recent report by the Salvation Army, the general population believes that those who live in poverty are lazy, and that they simply need a good work ethic."This is not the case," said Nyberg. "We need to change people's perception. Until that perspective is changed, we're going to have trouble changing politicians and business people's minds. It has to involve the business sector and the general public from all walks of life to change public opinion."The poverty, housing and homelessness symposium was held on the anniversary of the Senate report In From the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness, co-authored by Sen. Art Eggleton, a former Toronto mayor, and Sen. Hugh Segal. The symposium engaged some 250 business, community and government stakeholders on actions being taken to support the recommendations of the report. The report contains more than 70 recommendations, including increasing the National Child Benefit to reach $5,000 by 2012; with the provinces, develop a national housing and homelessness strategy and examine a basic annual income based on a negative income tax."Every day, one in 10 Canadians are in a battle because of insufficient income. They're struggling to get by," said Eggleton. "These families can't dream of getting ahead."Poverty, Eggleton was once told, "steals your soul leaving you with little hope and makes you feel isolated, lonely and hungry."