High cost of living in Vancouver prompts cancellation of Welfare Food Challenge

For the last six yearsin the late days of autumn, the Raise the Rates organization has held the Welfare Food Challenge in Metro Vancouver but not this year.

The challenge used to seeparticipants try to shop for a week of groceries on welfarerates. In 2017,after covering rent and other basics,participants were allowed$19 for a week's worth of food in keeping with provincial welfare rates.

It was supposedto give people a better understanding of how tough it is to liveon income assistance.

However, Raise the Rates cancelled the challenge entirely this yeardue to the high cost of living in Vancouver.

$5.75 a week

"Every year it's hard. Every year the point is to illustrate how hard it is," saidKell Gerlings, one of the event organizers.

But this year, said Gerlings, it would be all butimpossible. They calculated that challenge participants would only be allowed roughly $5.75a week for food about a quarter of last year's allowance.

Typically, someone living on income assistance in B.C. receives $710 a month.Raise the Rates use that number to calculatechallenge participants' weekly allowance.

They factor in the monthly minimumcost of personal hygiene(roughly $10), bus fare (roughly $28), a phone to look for a job (roughly $25) and rent. The average rent of a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel unit in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is now $687 a month, said Gerlings. Last year, it was $548.

Those highrents just for a room in a hotel with a shared bathroom and no kitchen is why the challenge was cancelled, she said. When you subtract $687 from $710, that leaves$23 for the whole month;divided by four, that's$5.75 a week.

"The rent has gone up significantly, and the rates have not gone up significantly to match that," said Gerlings.

'The hardest hit'

She said there aren't enoughregulations preventing landlords from raising the rent of vacant SRO units. And, thoughthe B.C. New Democrats raised welfare rates by $100 after they took office in 2017, it's not enough, saidGerlings.

"Keep in mind that this is the first welfare raise in over a decade. That $100 was ten years in the making," she said.

"The affordability crisis is on everybody's minds, but people on welfare are truly the hardest hit," said Gerlings. "There was no way that that $100 was going to stay in people's pockets."

To remedy the problem, Gerlingssaid there needto be aggressive rent controls tostoplandlords from raising rents in between tenancies. There also needs to be a significant increase inincome assistance, she said.

With files from On the Coast