Welfare system ineffective, study concludes
Poorest people in B.C. left scrambling to survive, move out of poverty
Vancouver Sun
Frances Bula
April 22, 2008

VANCOUVER - The province's welfare system makes people homeless, sometimes forces women to turn to prostitution and relies on food banks and charities to help provide the basics to its clients, according to an unprecedented in-depth study of welfare recipients.

The two-year study, partly funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, tracked a small group of people who are part of what the provincial government decided in 2002 was a serious problem that had to be tackled - people who stay on welfare a long time but are classified as "expected to work."

Researchers found that, contrary to government claims that its new welfare policies helped people get out of poverty, almost none of the 45 welfare recipients they tracked between 2004 to 2006 ended up better off.

Instead, they were mired in trying to survive, frequently experiencing periods of homelessness because they couldn't find a place to rent they could afford on welfare rates or because they were cut off. Eight women in the study turned to prostitution at points to make ends meet, while other recipients panhandled or turned to crime. Three-quarters used food banks.

By the end, almost two-thirds were still on welfare, with the biggest difference being that 40 per cent of them were reclassified as "disabled" instead of "expected to work." While that gave those people a little more money, they still ended up using food banks and other services to survive.

Twelve people in the study found work, although only four of them earned enough money to be considered no longer poor. And four had been cut off welfare and were homeless.

"Society pays for this in many ways," said Seth Klein, B.C. director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who co-wrote the report with Simon Fraser University professor Jane Pulkington.

Employment Minister Claude Richmond dismissed the report, saying the study was out of date and reliant on a "pretty thin" sample of welfare recipients. There were about 23,500 cases in the "expected to work" category in 2004, when the study participants were recruited….

He expects many of those will be reclassified as disabled and he said that, contrary to the report's findings that it takes up to two years for someone to get reclassified, the ministry has speeded up that process.

But social-service advocates said their experience is that nothing has changed over the past two years…..

And Judy Graves, the City of Vancouver's homeless-outreach worker, said she and others doing work to try to get people off the streets are constantly discouraged by the employment ministry's practice of cutting people off welfare.

"The frustration that we feel as advocates is when we pour work into getting someone the most basic stability ... and then to have them cut off welfare and see the months of work disappear."

Graves said being cut off welfare has a much more severe impact than most people realize, because those who are cut off lose their right to free medication, so they often end up living on the street and getting no treatment for everything from pneumonia to HIV.

"This is not what you expect in a civilized city."

B.C.'s struggles over welfare have been going on a long time. The former NDP government changed policies in 1992 with the aim of reducing the caseload, which it did.

Then the Liberal government, elected in 2001, brought in new changes to address what it said were areas of concern, like the fact that six per cent of people in the province were on welfare and that 70 per cent of people in the "expected to work" category had been on welfare for a number of years.

The ministry says that since 2001, it has reduced the number of cases in the "expected to work" category from 87,329 to 21,372 now. It has also increased the number of disability cases from 43,000 to 63,000 in the same period….

Its budget for this year is $1.54 billion, about $400 million less than in 2001/2002 when its new welfare policies went into effect.