Councillors back top-up of housing benefit
Money coming from department surplus
The city is poised to reverse recent cuts to an emergency fund that could have shut out hundreds of struggling Hamiltonians from accessing help to cover unpaid hydro bills and rental arrears.
Councillors unanimously backed a motion to top up the provincially funded housing stability benefit – cash meant to prevent residents from losing their homes and cover moving costs – with the community and emergency services department’s projected surplus.
The move comes after more than 30 advocates rallied outside City Hall Monday, urging councillors to replenish the fund immediately.
“This is an emergency,” said Brendan Jowett, a staff lawyer at the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic. “It can’t wait.”
At the end of November, the city re-
stricted access to the fund to only Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program recipients and cut some previously eligible costs because the budget was almost empty. Increasing requests for help left about $500,000 out of $5.7 million. The money was meant to last until March 2017.
The remaining cash was to be focused on last-month rent deposits, beds for kids as well as rental and utility arrears.
The city estimated the new restrictions could cut off as many as 600 low-income residents who might otherwise have applied for help over the next three months.
The motion put forward Monday by Coun. Sam Merulla asked that the community and emergency services department’s projected surplus of $945,000 be used to top up the benefit.
If that is not enough to allow it to operate without restrictions, the motion suggests additional funding be taken from the tax stabilization reserve or the city’s pledge to spend $50 million on homelessness and poverty over the next decade.
Late Monday, staff was not able to provide specifics about why the community and emergency services department is forecasting a $945,000 surplus.
However, money could also flow to the emergency fund as a result of cash the city is expected to receive from the merger of Horizon Utilities with utilities in Vaughan, Markham and Barrie.
Topping up the housing stability benefit was one of the ideas put forward at Friday’s general issues committee meeting for how to best use the money, but Monday’s motion provided a more “immediate solution” as the dividend money isn’t expected until spring, Merulla said.
Full-time student and single mom Natasha Findlay-Clairmont spoke to the committee and at the rally about the challenges she faces trying to secure proper housing for her family of three.
Her landlord slapped her with an eviction notice in September so he could move his family into the unit in which she and her children had spent the last two winters without heat.
Without support like the housing services benefit – which she was no longer eligible for under the restricted access – she didn’t know how she could afford the cost of moving combined with first and last months’ rent given the $748 a month she receives through OSAP.
“Not having the housing stability benefit puts … not only myself, but many Hamilton citizens at serious risk of being homeless,” she said. “Where do we go? What do we qualify for?
“As low-income citizens with emergency housing situations, (it’s) beyond our control.”
The city plans to lobby the province for additional funding, Merulla said.
The city received about $19 million last year from the province under the Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative, through which the housing stability benefit is funded. CHPI funding is slated to rise by about $200,000 a year for the next three years.
Laura Gallant, press secretary to Housing Minister Chris Ballard, recently said in an email response to a Spectator story that city officials have the “flexibility” to allocate the cash as they see fit.