Poverty difficult for people living with disabilities

Support from government is lacking, A.J. Brown says.

Living with poverty is depressing. I’m one of the 500,000 people in B.C. compelled to live this way.

Last year, thanks in part to pressure applied by The Vancouver Sun, people like me got a “raise” in disability assistance. That amount was $25 a week.

In one week, for example, Premier John Horgan earns more income from taxpayers than the amount upon which a disabled person is expected to squeak by for three months.

I’m not living in poverty because I want to, or because I’m lazy, or because I use drugs. I live in poverty because I’m physically disabled, and because my government’s policies ensure I stay in poverty.

Poverty means I can’t buy my own clothes. I often go without food one day a week to meet my budget. Constant stress affects my sleep.

My provincial government recently held meetings across B.C. It asked those living in poverty how to solve it.

Here’s what I told them:

Raise disability income assistance to the lowest income-tax bracket on tax returns — $38,000 per year — and index it to the lowest tax bracket going forward.

Raise our earnings limit to $50,000 above the annual lowest income-tax bracket.

Right now, we are permitted to earn $12,000 for the year. If the government wants us off social assistance, it must permit a reasonable space between what we earn and the cutoff. If the poverty line is $38,000 a year, why is assistance for disabled people cut at $12,000?

Instead, allow us to supplement assistance with income above the poverty line. Perhaps then we can move toward self-sufficiency that offers an escape from social assistance entirely.

I can never again work in a conventional job. I can sell my art from home using the internet and through craft fairs. Yet, should I earn $12,000 by September, for example, then my income assistance would be cut for the final quarter.

However, I still have to pay rent and for internet for the next three months with no assurance I’ll have any income. Paying my bills isn’t optional, though.

Provide free skills training for work, and for work in which people with disabilities are actually interested.

The object shouldn’t be the lowest benchmark. One advocate, Helen Keller, observed that “it is not so much the infirmity that causes unhappiness as the grief of a useless, dependent existence.” Why is this still happening ?

Government may throw us a bone so that it can feel good about itself, but just keeping us busy isn’t a solution. Providing us with the training we need but can’t afford so that we may stay motivated in our lives — that is a solution. I suspect this is partly why so many of us commit suicide.

End the discriminatory, ageist injustice of stripping B.C.’s disabled of their provincial benefits when they turn 65. Since disabilities are for life, a disabled person’s benefits should be for life. When we turn 65 our disability doesn’t magically disappear, so why is provincial assistance stopped?

Theoretically, federal benefits in the form of the old age pension and the guaranteed income supplement kick in at 65.

These two federal supplements aren’t equal to B.C. social assistance.

Many disabled people unable to work can’t qualify for Canada Pension Plan income. This misbegotten system simply perpetuates and reinforces poverty for the disabled who are unable to do anything about it.

End all clawbacks. I believe this appropriation represents theft from the disabled poor.

Require museums, art galleries and sports events to provide free access to those with disabilities. It’s about making life more livable for people with disabilities who are excluded from public facilities and events by low incomes imposed by government.

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