Critics blast B.C.'s housing assistance policy
May 13, 2010
Georgia Straight
By Carlito Pablo

A mother on income assistance sees her kid taken away by a B.C. child protection officer. Next thing she knows, the provincial government cuts her shelter allowance. She becomes homeless or finds herself in accommodation that’s unsuitable for her child to visit. Then the kid stays longer in foster care. Worse, the child becomes a permanent ward of the state.

Scenes like this are witnessed over and over again by social workers and child-advocacy groups. It’s all because of a policy the Ministry of Housing and Social Development has to reduce the housing assistance given to families with children under the temporary care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

Following failed attempts to convince the ministry that the policy is unreasonable, Pivot Legal Society and the West Coast Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund have gone a step further in their efforts to rectify this situation. Acting on behalf of community groups across the province, the two organizations filed a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsperson on May 12, arguing that the rule is “unfair” and “oppressive”.

“We’re hoping that they will recommend that the Ministry of Housing and Social Development amend the regulations so they provide for the maintenance of a full family shelter allowance when a child is in temporary care,” Pivot lawyer Lobat Sadrehashemi told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.

“When children are in temporary care, the whole goal from the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s perspective is to return the child to the parent,” Sadrehashemi said. “But now the Ministry of Housing and Social Development has created this further obstacle.”….

For example, more than half of B.C. children in foster care are not ready for school upon starting kindergarten. Only 21 percent of children in care graduate from high school, in contrast to 78 percent of the general population. Just seven percent of children in the care of the government ever reach university.

Youths in care are also more likely to commit crimes, according to the complaint. Some 41 percent of these young people become involved with the justice system by the age of 21, compared to 6.6 percent of the general population.

“At a time when we want to be supporting families, it’s a policy that doesn’t recognize how housing works,” Sadrehashemi said.

The maximum shelter allowance for families on income assistance is based on the number of people living together. In the case of a single mom and a lone child, it’s $570 a month. According to the complaint, if the child is removed by the government, this amount is reduced by $195, or 34 percent.

The complaint notes that with only $375 a month for shelter, a single parent doesn’t have many accommodation options, especially in urban areas, where housing vacancies are low, and in a province where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment was more than $1,000 as of October 2009.

The document also points out that 35 percent of all child-removal court orders between 2003 and 2008 in B.C. involved families who were on welfare. Aboriginal children are overrepresented in the child-protection system, as they are 10 times more likely than non-Natives to be taken into care…