Homeless in Niagara hit by austerity budget

The Liberals cut the Community and Start up Benefit and put in a new funding program. The end result is that $4.2 million will no longer be available to the Region of Niagara for issues related to homelessness some of which was used to fund the emergency energy fund and to provide emergency hostels. It is an 88% cut Last year over 11,200 households benefitted from the program. More than 1/2 of the households used it for rent deposits and 23% used it to prevent to the loss of their utilities. The situation is dire – as seen in July when some families were put up in hotels.The Government is downloading the costs to the region.