(TORONTO)Talking about abusing the system and entitlement (2014, apartment)

[benjitoronto]

check this out, is this why we are in deficit??
February 26, 2014 Updated: February 27, 2014 | 12:40 pm Adjust Text Size
Regent Park residents not happy with TCHC
By Jessica Smith Cross
Metro
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Jessica Smith Cross/Metro Regent Park residents, from left, Sharukh Syed, Mohammad Ismail and Chowdhury Ahia stand in a newly developed area of Regent Park.
According to a community organizer in Regent Park, any research showing that residents are happy with their new homes can’t be true.

Chowdhury Ahia, a 15-year resident of Regent Park involved in community committees, organized a petition that lists complaints and makes demands of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

“If they’re happy, then why did 960 households sign with us?” he asked.

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The Regent Park revitalization project began in 2005 and is expected to be complete by 2019. It replaces 2,083 rent-geared-to-income units and builds 700 additional affordable units alongside 5,400 market-rate units. It also includes new amenities and retail space, and has won awards for planning and design.

The research Ahia dismissed as false is the Toronto Social Housing Health Study by the St. Michael’s Hospital Centre for Research on Inner City Health.

Researchers surveyed 59 residents who had moved into new units as part of the revitalization project and found they had greater satisfaction with their home and neighbourhood. Respondents also said they felt safer and had lower levels of distress or mild depression than they had in their old Regent Park units.

Chowdury’s petition paints a different picture, including complaints that the relocation back to Regent Park is taking too long.

It further claims that the new subsidized units are too small and the open-kitchen concept allows cooking smells to permeate the home.

Resident Mohammad Ismail said he was given the choice between a larger unit in a different neighbourhood or a smaller one in Regent Park. He and his wife — both on disability — chose to share a three-bedroom Regent Park apartment with four other family members.

“We have to live here because the community and the school for our children and the hospital and doctors are important to me and my wife,” he said, adding the cramped living space is causing his children to have trouble studying.

The petition’s other complaints involve claims of inadequate security and alleged disrespectful behaviour by TCHC staff. The petition also demands that rent be reduced to the minimum rate of $85 a month when tenants visit family abroad.

Chowdhury said that’s because travel is expensive and people can’t work while travelling.

“If your mother or father is sick back home, you have to visit sometimes,” he said

TCHC spokesperson Sara Goldvine said rent is set by provincial policy and always geared to a resident’s income.

As for the other complaints, Goldvine said the city required TCHC to rebuild the same number of new units of each size as existed previously in Regent Park and anyone who was moved into a smaller unit likely had more bedrooms in their previous home than their family makeup warranted.

She added that 85 per cent of people who were relocated as part of the revitalization have already been re-housed.

Jim Dunn, lead researcher on the social-housing study, told Metro that details of the relocation process were not investigated. Instead, the study asked general questions about well-being and perceptions of the community and new home.

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[klmrocks]

Not sure I am 100% getting your point? Are you saying we are in deficit because we trying assit people with lower incomes to live in more dignified housing? There are certainly people that do abuse the system, but we do not need any slums in our city. These actions are an investment. All properties need to be maintained ... even if they are used for lower income housing.

[bostonkid123]

Too long did not read.

[katzpaw]

Originally Posted by bostonkid123

Too long did not read.

This one jumped out at me:
"The petition also demands that [subsidized] rent be reduced to the minimum rate of $85 a month when tenants visit family abroad.
Chowdhury said that’s because travel is expensive and people can’t work while travelling."

[bostonkid123]

Originally Posted by katzpaw

This one jumped out at me:
"The petition also demands that [subsidized] rent be reduced to the minimum rate of $85 a month when tenants visit family abroad.
Chowdhury said that’s because travel is expensive and people can’t work while travelling."

How publicly spirited. But wait, how is this any of your business, or mine? Yes I know I know it's all your tax dollars being wasted again.

[klmrocks]

Originally Posted by katzpaw

This one jumped out at me:
"The petition also demands that [subsidized] rent be reduced to the minimum rate of $85 a month when tenants visit family abroad.
Chowdhury said that’s because travel is expensive and people can’t work while travelling."

So people with lower incomes can not want to try to visit an ill family member? Seeing his dying mother does not matter because he has a lower income? Holly cow! The man did not say he wanted a discount on rent because he was feeling cold and depressed and needed to work on his tan while visiting Cancun in December. I think the idea of residents of these lower income housing areas creating petitions to help articulate their needs is an excellent idea. Far too often are support systems created to assist people that are not reflective of their actual needs and desires! (Oh no I said needs and desires... heaven forbid those self entitled lower income people actually have NEEDS and DESIRED... don't they know we are just trying to marginalize them). In any successful business model you are going to want to base your strategies on what the needs of your clients are. Why should this idea not be used in the non-profit sector? Who better to tell decision makers how to improve these services then the people using the services?

I think it is so easy to blame people that have less resources and a disproportionate amount of struggles. The cosmic joke is the biggest abusers of the system and people who feel the greatest false sense of entitlement are usually people that have a lot of wealth and use their connections to fraud the tax system, get jobs/positions that they are not necessarily the best candidates for and unfairly cut to the front of the line in our health care system. These are usually the same people or highly paid employees of the organizations that exploit refugees, new immigrants and lower income workers for their own profit! You may want to also note that these same "lower income workers" are likely the people that serve your morning coffee at Tim Hortons, bags your grocery at Walmart and have baked the bread you buy made in local factory just north of the "nicer" neighbourhoods in Toronto. In a country that has certain companies and people making millions off selling non-sense like gourmet dog food, decorative covers for cell phones, high end bottle water and non-nutritive foods ... we cannot cut a lower income person a break to go visit a sick family member? Imagine the financial disparity it may cause to our society .. OMG ... we may have to start drinking tap water again and fluffy may have to start eating the no name brand dog food... the horror.

What strikes me as most interesting is the possibliity that so many of these people living in lower income housing have family outside of the country? Could it be a confirmation of the fact theat YES we continue to use immigrants as sources of cheap menial labour? Are we setting things up only to get these people to survive to keep doing the jobs we do not want to do and taking away hopes of their possibility for prosperity and happiness? If you do not get any of this more philosophical rant I will break it down for you this way. When you support notions that it is a good idea to take away basic hope and joy for someone who has very little ... don't cry when your Rosedale home gets broken in to, your fancy car gets jacked, you get mugged at knife point for your pretty new Coach bag and your property starts getting sprayed with gang graffiti because you have helped create the monsters. The chance of a lower income person eventually deciding that they are tired of cooperating with the rules of this society because it does not have their needs in mind increases when we take away their ability to hope and work towards the having some of the luxuries that the greater majority of this city has.

[lookyhere]

Originally Posted by klmrocks

So people with lower incomes can not want to try to visit an ill family member? Seeing his dying mother does not matter because he has a lower income? Holly cow! The man did not say he wanted a discount on rent because he was feeling cold and depressed and needed to work on his tan while visiting Cancun in December. I think the idea of residents of these lower income housing areas creating petitions to help articulate their needs is an excellent idea. Far too often are support systems created to assist people that are not reflective of their actual needs and desires! (Oh no I said needs and desires... heaven forbid those self entitled lower income people actually have NEEDS and DESIRED... don't they know we are just trying to marginalize them). In any successful business model you are going to want to base your strategies on what the needs of your clients are. Why should this idea not be used in the non-profit sector? Who better to tell decision makers how to improve these services then the people using the services?

I think it is so easy to blame people that have less resources and a disproportionate amount of struggles. The cosmic joke is the biggest abusers of the system and people who feel the greatest false sense of entitlement are usually people that have a lot of wealth and use their connections to fraud the tax system, get jobs/positions that they are not necessarily the best candidates for and unfairly cut to the front of the line in our health care system. These are usually the same people or highly paid employees of the organizations that exploit refugees, new immigrants and lower income workers for their own profit! You may want to also note that these same "lower income workers" are likely the people that serve your morning coffee at Tim Hortons, bags your grocery at Walmart and have baked the bread you buy made in local factory just north of the "nicer" neighbourhoods in Toronto. In a country that has certain companies and people making millions off selling non-sense like gourmet dog food, decorative covers for cell phones, high end bottle water and non-nutritive foods ... we cannot cut a lower income person a break to go visit a sick family member? Imagine the financial disparity it may cause to our society .. OMG ... we may have to start drinking tap water again and fluffy may have to start eating the no name brand dog food... the horror.

What strikes me as most interesting is the possibliity that so many of these people living in lower income housing have family outside of the country? Could it be a confirmation of the fact theat YES we continue to use immigrants as sources of cheap menial labour? Are we setting things up only to get these people to survive to keep doing the jobs we do not want to do and taking away hopes of their possibility for prosperity and happiness? If you do not get any of this more philosophical rant I will break it down for you this way. When you support notions that it is a good idea to take away basic hope and joy for someone who has very little ... don't cry when your Rosedale home gets broken in to, your fancy car gets jacked, you get mugged at knife point for your pretty new Coach bag and your property starts getting sprayed with gang graffiti because you have helped create the monsters. The chance of a lower income person eventually deciding that they are tired of cooperating with the rules of this society because it does not have their needs in mind increases when we take away their ability to hope and work towards the having some of the luxuries that the greater majority of this city has.

"..The cosmic joke is the biggest abusers of the system and people who feel the greatest false sense of entitlement are usually people that have a lot of wealth and use their connections to fraud the tax system, get jobs/positions that they are not necessarily the best candidates for and unfairly cut to the front of the line in our health care system. These are usually the same people or highly paid employees of the organizations that exploit refugees, new immigrants and lower income workers for their own profit!.."

Nice to see that someone else sees through the hypocrisy and lies of this scapegoating of the immigrant when the real miscreants of our system are the sociopaths who slither through our more 'respectable' parts of town. Canadians are a somewhat strange lot, that's for sure.