social issues: homelessness & poverty

June 6, 2006

over the past week and a bit, i've been learning more about the situation of poverty and homelessness in our city. i went to a homeless workshop with jer a little over a week ago. the focus of the workshop was with regards to immigrants and homelessness. it was very eye-opening. while there were many topics discussed, the biggest thing i took away from it was the need for community support. in my eyes, the most important factor between homelessness and non-homelessness for immigrants is support. they need people to be in their lives that will care, support, love, encourage them. they need people that can help connect them to job opportunities, people related in their field of work. interestingly, the surveyors asked their sample whether they attended a place of worship. they noted that a place of worship was a great place to build connecting points, but regular church attendance was really quite low.

many of the immigrants surveyed in the study had a post-secondary degree, but it was not recognized in canada. i also learn that some canadian workplaces required canadian-only job experience. they would not even recognize workplace experience from the US. talk about a close-minded policy! how are they to get jobs? plus, add to the that, the language and cultural barriers immigrants face. it's a lose-lose situation for them. the bottom line: unless immigrants have support, they will most likely end up on the streets.

support, support, support. community, community, community. two pivotal words. words that should be associated with the Christian church. but are they? where is the church in all this?

following that workshop, i read an article in the toronto star about women and the shelter system. i was shocked to discover how awful the situation was for them. i read a statistic that there was something like a 70-80% chance that these women would be murdered. it talked about how women didn't have enough time in shelters to secure a job and/or living. their average stay time ranged from four to six weeks, when it should have somewhere around six months. it also talked about how women would rather choose to live in a life of abuse rather than in poverty. this morning, i read another article regarding this issue. there were actual quotations from women who said they'd rather be in an abusive relationship than see their children starve. women in these situations have a really difficult time getting out.

it's almost impossible with the way things are now. the concept of minimum wage was created so that people earning it would have enough money to live. unfortunately, minimum wage was never increased to reflect inflation. thus, it no longer does what it was supposed to do! in terms of being on welfare, if someone wanted to get themselves off of welfare, it's very difficult. from what i remember, welfare actually pays out more than a minimum wage job. another problem is the lack of affordable housing in our city. this has been an issue for far too long. people have been on wait lists for years and the list only keeps growing and growing. our social policies have seriously failed. they need to be revamped and they need to be revamped soon. something is horribly, horribly wrong here. how did we let this happen? it breaks my heart to learn that women have to subject themselves to abusive relationships in order to survive.

what can we do? what can i do? awareness is one thing, but what else? and to think, this is only one of the many, many social issues in this city. i hope and pray that one day, in this city, that the church will be the one advocating for the rights of the oppressed and marginalized, that the church will be standing up and fighting for fairer social policies and that the church will be the place of support and community that so many people desperately need.

Posted by Leo Chan at June 6, 2006 7:20 PM