Legislated Poverty

Many community initiatives treat poverty as an individual problem that can be solved by helping, housing, training or feeding individuals. Other initiatives define poverty in terms of “shortages” – of housing, employment, food, etc. While community initiatives based on these views may help address the immediate needs of individuals, creative social change work asks us to also attend to structural causes of poverty. What follows is intended as an invitation to this work.

Local Bylaws Create Poverty

Local bylaws create poverty through their impact on Affordable Housing. Poverty ensues when people must allocate too-high a proportion of their income to purchasing shelter. People are considered at risk of homelessness when they pay more than 50% of their income for housing.

Many local housing policies reflect the assumption that families want to and (by virtue of cheap oil) can be housed in the suburbs. Local bylaws that enforce the development of single family dwellings on large lots ensure a growing crisis of affordable housing. Alternative Development Standards and “Smart Growth” principles can be used to create diverse and textured neighbourhoods, instead of the rich suburban monoculture that overwhelms us. Houses get bigger and bigger – requiring ever more energy to sustain, more roads and cars to service, and more money to buy and build. Along with its ruinous environmental cost, this form of development has a terrible social cost. Because such housing is completely untenable for poor people, unwell seniors, handicapped people, young families, single parents – or anyone other than wealthy, healthy middle-aged couples – our communities lose diversity, strength, and the capacity to care. Alternative approaches encourage secondary suites, mixed lot sizes, infill development in village areas, and allowing mixed-use development in towns with residences over stores, encouraging networked, pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods. Focused development can then be balanced by large, connected corridors of wild land and farm land.

“Federal and provincial governments have virtually withdrawn from the housing field. Funding cuts to national housing programs have meant that new affordable housing development ground to a halt after 1993. … As in other policy areas, governments are placing excessive faith in private markets and "the community" to meet the demand for affordable housing,” comments Canadian Council on Social Development. (2001). To date, developers are uninterested and local communities have neither the resources nor the expertise to create sufficient social housing to meet growing needs. Yet there are simple actions local governments could take, at the level of housing bylaws, to empower the construction of affordable housing. Simply eliminating any zoning requirement that a home have only one kitchen would immediately increase the stock of affordable housing at no cost – in time or money – to a community. In some jurisdictions developers are required to include an affordable component of 10% in new projects of 10 or more units, but in the majority of communities this is not the case.

Urquart (2001) notes: “zoning regulations have profound implications for equal access. Zoning was intended to keep certain land uses (e.g. factories) separate from residential uses. Over the years it has devolved to separate out 'types' of residential housing with different densities and tenure: such as single family homes, high-rise apartments or condominiums, group homes, accessory apartments, rooming houses, and so on. These seemingly neutral designations can have the effect of excluding members of specific demographic groups from particular residential zones. For example:

• by-laws which restrict certain areas to single family homes (especially if no accessory

apartments are permitted) have the effect of excluding anyone whose income is not high

enough to purchase a home or to rent a whole house;

• bylaws on the number of unrelated individuals permitted in particular housing forms, in

conjunction with land use decisions (zoning designations) can have the effect of excluding group homes from particular neighbourhoods;

• certain by-laws can impact negatively on specific cultural, ethnic or religious groups. For example, most municipalities which do not permit apartments in houses (a zoning and bylaw decision), do so by making it illegal to have a second kitchen. This has serious

consequences for people … whose culture encourages an extended or composite family structure. (It also affects anyone wishing to have an aging relative or an adult child living in a self-contained unit in the house.)”

Encouraged by new zoning bylaws and official community plans, designers will respond to the growing challenge of creating affordable, environmentally responsible housing. Avi Friedman (2000) suggests:

”The mind-set of the future will be a unique approach to design—one that allows flexible arrangements of interior spaces. In a three-storey structure, for example, we would have the choice of buying one, two or three levels within a unit. An aging couple might live on the ground floor of a unit where their daughter and son-in-law occupy the top two floors. In an adjacent unit, the lower floor could be a home office in a two-storey residence, and the top floor could be rented to a single person. The structure would be sold by the level. Small size and efficient building practices could bring the cost of housing down to the cost of an upscale car.”

See also Affordable Housing. Other design options for affordable housing will include Natural Building- a practice that can be encouraged through local bylaws.

End Legislated Poverty

End Legislated Poverty (ELP) is a coalition of over 40 groups in BC, working together to educate and organize in order to make governments reduce and end poverty. ELP believes unemployment and poverty are not the fault of individual poor people. They are caused by government policies and legislation. At the provincial level, low minimum wages and welfare rates keep people living far below the lines of poverty. People on welfare are not allowed to earn money or even receive child support - every cent is deducted from their payment. The working poor must pay income tax as well as paying for child care. http://www2.povnet.org/elp

Corporations Create Poverty

To end legislated poverty we need to demand full-cost accounting in government budgets at all levels.

As examined in the article on Community Economic Development, wealth consists of more than financial capital. Our present economic system does not provide mechanisms for valuing socially-held forms of wealth. Corporations must - by law - externalize costs while operating to enclose and privatize socially-held wealth. The very process of generating financial capital impoverishes families and communities.

Vandana Shiva explores the operation and consequences of this dynamic in an article on globalization and poverty. While Shiva focuses on her native India, the same dynamics are at work in B.C. island communities. Global market culture eviscerates local economies, impoverishing farmers and increasing a widespread dependence on industrialized food production. Shiva writes: “The most efficient means of rendering the destruction of nature, local economies and small autonomous producers is by rendering their production invisible.” The BC Food Systems Network Society (n.d.) comments, “Full cost-accounting reveals the costs as well as the risks of a food system which is dependent on outside sources, long-distance movement of food, high-input agriculture, and poor population health. Food dependency holds political as well as economic dangers: any jurisdiction which cannot feed its people is at the mercy of whoever does.” http://www.fooddemocracy.org/security.html. See also Community Economic Development, Claiming the Commons and Agriculture and Food.

An economist who suggests alternative methods for wealth creation is Catherine Austin Fitts. She says, “If we want clean water, fresh food, a sound financial system and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. That means withdrawing our investment from the stocks and bonds of the institutions that are draining us.” See http://www.solari.com/index.html

There Are No Shortages

An examination of the table below shows there is no shortage of financial wealth in Canada. What is missing is a social willingness or economic culture to distribute wealth more equitably.

Copied from Teacher: Newsmagazine of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, Nov./Dec. 2006, Vol. 19, No. 3.

Discrimination Creates Poverty

Government measures to address discrimination can range from affirmative action programs through creating safe streets for seniors. Settling First Nations land claims is key to making poverty history. Poverty is specifically linked to discrimination. Here are some statistics from the “Women and the Economy” website at http://www.unpac.ca/economy/index2.html

Aboriginal peoples make up a disproportionate number of the poor in Canada. 42.7% of Aboriginal women live in poverty. Poverty rates among racialized people are disproportionately high. Women of colour have a 37% chance of living in poverty. The rate for white women is 18%. In Canada 74% of women with disabilities are unemployed. For those who have jobs, the average employment income for a disabled woman is $8,360. The average employment income of a disabled man is $19,250. Almost half of single Canadian women over the age of 65 live in poverty.

1 in 4 First Nations children and 1 in 6 Canadian children live in poverty. (Assembly of First Nations, 2006).

For information on economic human rights and alternative money systems, see http://www.unpac.ca/economy/altmoney.html

References

Assembly of First Nations. (2006). Make Poverty History: The First Nations Plan For Creating Opportunity at www.afn.ca

Canadian Council on Social Development. (2001). Growing Together:

Priorities for the 2001 Federal Budget. Retrieved online Nov. 2006 at http://www.ccsd.ca/pr/bud01/bud01pt3.htm

The BC Food Systems Network Society (n.d.). (The Network was formed in September, 1999, to link people all over the province involved in community-level action related to food.) See http://www.fooddemocracy.org/index.html

Freidman, A. (2000) Your Next Home. TRANSITION MAGAZINE. VOL. 30 NO. 3. Retrieved Nov. 2006 from

http://www.vifamily.ca/library/transition/303/303.html

Kumar, S. (n.d.) Poverty and progress. Resurgence issue 196. Retrieved Nov. 2006 at http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/kumar196.htm

Shiva, V. (n.d.). Globalization and poverty. Resurgence Issue 202. Retrieved Nov. 2006 at http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/shiva202.htm

Urquhart, D. (2001) Smart growth and social development. Our Social Capital. Vol. I, No.2 October 2001 ISSN 1499-0458. Retrieved online Nov. 2006 at

http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/PDFs/Newsletters/Housing%20Newsletter.pdf