Wil Andruschak
Ray Danyluk directs middle-class mom to CUPS for housing help
Christina Robinson is like many other young professionals. The blond-haired 26-year-old is articulate and enthusiastic when she speaks. She likes lattes. She works full-time teaching financial management to people with low incomes and at night she takes university classes. On the side she does commercial photography. Her annual salary is about $42000.
Given her steady job and reasonable pay the single mother was surprised when she recently received an e-mail from Ray Danyluk Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs and housing suggesting she use a housing registry designed for people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
“It really wouldn’t be appropriate for a university-educated professional to go down and stand in line at CUPS (the Calgary Urban Project Society) and say ‘Can you help me find a rental unit?’” says Robinson. “He’s telling middle-income people to go use low-income supports.”
In August Robinson sent a letter to her MLA Conservative Neil Brown outlining her housing problem. She and her seven-year-old son had been living in a three-bedroom unit in Thorncliffe since May — not because she wanted three rooms but because she couldn’t find a two-bedroom place that allowed kids.
“I teach financial literacy so I’m good with money” says Robinson. “I have no credit card debt. My car’s paid off. The only debt I have is student loans.” The three-bedroom place was reasonably affordable since Robinson convinced her landlord to drop the rent from $1500 a month to $1300. However with winter fast approaching she knew the utility bills would put her into debt. So she applied to the Calgary Housing Company (CHC) for a subsidy but was deemed ineligible because she makes too much money.
Robinson did the math and discovered she’d actually go into less debt if she was on welfare because she’d qualify for the CHC subsidy. “This is a serious flaw in Canadian and provincial social assistance” she wrote in her e-mail to Brown. “Please write me to help me find a solution.” A couple weeks later she received Danyluk’s letter. “Other options may be available to you” says the e-mail dated August 27. “I encourage you to contact the Low Cost Housing Registry Network operated by (CUPS).” He also suggested she look into whether or not she qualifies for the province’s Homeless and Eviction Prevention Fund.
Robinson was stunned by Danyluk’s suggestion. Largely because of her work she’s acutely aware that many people in Calgary desperately need the CUPS registry more than she does. Why Robinson wondered was the housing minister suggesting she use it? “It just shows how removed his perspective is from what’s going on” she says.
Tracy Balash a spokesperson for the department of municipal affairs and housing says Danyluk was simply laying out options. “I’m not even sure she would be eligible to receive any support from (CUPS) either given the amount that she’s earning” says Balash adding that the province isn’t responsible for setting eligibility criteria for organizations like CUPS or CHC. “That’s why I’m sure she was encouraged to go there and see what they have to say and if there’s something they might be able to do to help (her)” says Balash. “But until she does that there’s no way of knowing that.”
Balash says it’s not the department’s policy to direct everyone who needs housing help to CUPS or any other specific place. “Every person is different” she says. ( Fast Forward contacted the minister’s constituency office and department office three business days before deadline asking for an interview but never heard back from Danyluk. CUPS didn’t return numerous phone calls.)
Grant Neufeld co-ordinator of the Calgary Housing Action Initiative says Danyluk’s response shows the Conservative government is “out of touch” with reality. “Suggesting that someone who’s making over $40000 a year needs to be going to that service says a lot about our government’s unwillingness to deal with its responsibilities” he says. “They are actively pushing people into homelessness.”
In the end Robinson found a solution. Her mother bought a condo and Robinson will live there and pay the $900-a-month mortgage. “I know I’ll be OK because I have a social network of family and friends in Calgary” says Robinson. “What I’m worried about is people who don’t have that network…. If the middle-low income single-mom-type group isn’t being properly accommodated by the government we’re just going to be chopped up and slipped down into that low income.”
