Advocacy

Canadian Seniors Foundation Ltd got its start in an unusual way. This is our story about how and why we found it so important to start this company.

Some time ago, a new lady moved into my subsidized apartment building. A short time later we started to date and OMG we fell in love! We thought it would be nice to confirm our love to the world and get married, but after living in subsidized housing for about 6 years, and with every aspect of our lives being controlled by management and the governments, I decided to check - if we got married, would it affect our pensions. Wow, was I ever surprised!

The Federal government told me that about $300 each per month would be deducted from both of our pensions. Then, I called Alberta Seniors Benefits, and they would deduct about $200 each per month. These strokes of the pen would total about $500 each from our low-income pensions. That would equal about 22.7% less money each and every month.

Now, imagine if 22.7% of your family's total gross income was deducted. I suspect you wouldn’t make it.

So, I investigated it more. I talked to many couples and they have experienced this situation too. One couple even got divorced to avoid this deduction and they now live in separate subsided apartments.

Canada is deemed to be a benevolent entity. You would think the government would support Senior couples getting together - there are so many good reasons, from loneliness to health issues. However, in our case we live separately and are under constant threat of eviction making for a very difficult and a stressful relationship. Stressful, because if management thinks we are living together, they will change our rental agreements or evict us to find a different home - which is currently not easy to find in subsidized housing.

Now this got under my skin. Rather than sit around and complain, we decided to do something about it, so we started this company to advocate against this deduction of about $500 per person per month. We asked, when has it ever been cheaper to live as a couple? In subsidized housing, rent is calculated at 30% of your income. When you live together, rent is still calculated on both incomes at 30%! You don’t save money, ever!

So now they've taken away 22.7% of your income. Rent is about half of the remaining $1,600 a month, then there's other bills, groceries (healthy food is much more expensive), medication, and sundry items. Life is a stress now, causing more trips to emergency.

This is backwards thinking!