ODSP/OW Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit Cut

The Community Start-up and Maintenance Benefit is being cut.

The Community Start-up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB) is important because:

• It is targeted to assist people on social assistance – people who rely on OW or ODSP are among the most vulnerable in Ontario.
• It provides people with the direct assistance they need to retain their housing and prevent homelessness – it can help them pay their rent or utility arrears, or help them move to safer or more secure housing.
• It is a mandatory benefit – people that are denied are able to appeal the decision. This oversight ensures a measure of fairness for Ontarians with low-income and protects them from arbitrary decisions.

These critically important aspects of CSUMB are likely to be lost in January 2013. That’s when the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing will get half of current CSUMB funds and give it to municipalities for local housing and homelessness programs, which are meant to serve an even larger pool of low-income people.

The other half will be taken out of social assistance altogether. CSUMB will cease to exist as of January 2013.

Act now to save these programs!

Tell your local MPP to do what they can to reverse these cuts: in person, over the phone, or by mail. Attached to this email is a background kit that contains more information that will be helpful for you to lobby your local MPP.

In the meantime, take a minute and click here to send an email against these cuts!

Your email will go to John Milloy, Minister of Community and Social Services, Kathleen Wynne, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and Dwight Duncan, Finance Minister, as well as the opposition critics for these ministries, urging them to reverse these cuts and restore full-funding to these critical programs.