In January of next year the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit will be axed, in it's place will be a new municipally run program (can you say downloading) with half the budget of the current program. I'm not a psychic but I can predict that a greater share of the funding will now go to administrative costs with each municipality needing their own bureaucracy to administer their programs.
On average each year nearly 200,000 singles and families rely on this program for short term help to either stay in their home , to find a home for themselves or make emergency repairs to their homes. In Toronto in the past year alone more than 37,000 people have accessed the Community Start Up and Maintenance Benefit that is a ton of potential homelessness averted for a mere $114 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the financial and social costs of dealing with homelessness.
“This is a major service to low-income and vulnerable people and it’s being chopped in half,” said Phil Brown, general manager of Toronto’s shelter, support and housing division.
“We’re very concerned and I think most, if not all, service managers across the province are equally concerned.”
There you have it in the name of efficiency we see environmental regulations weakened, services privatised by decree, this despite the fact that invariably P3's end up providing us with reduced service at higher cost and those most in need get the screws put to them, all the while the corporate neo-liberalist agenda marches on.
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