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Disability assistance recipients trapped by rules, advocates say

Moving in with a partner is usually an exciting step in a relationship, one that also brings financial benefits as costs for things like housing are shared. But the prospect filled Shawn with dread.
Heather McCain
Advocate Heather McCain said the income and disability assistance system punishes recipients who are in relationships in many ways. ‘People feel like they have to hide relationships in order to survive.’ Photo by Christopher Cheung.

Moving in with a partner is usually an exciting step in a relationship, one that also brings financial benefits as costs for  things like housing are shared.

But the prospect filled Shawn with dread.

Shawn has been on provincial disability  assistance for many years. As a single person, they receive about $1,183  per month. More than $1,000 of that went to rent a room in a  pet-friendly Victoria, B.C. suite where they could have a dog.

But after a roommate moved out and rent  increased in 2018, Shawn could not pay all the rent alone. Moving in  with their partner became the only feasible choice.

But living together could  be costly, evidence of what the provincial government calls a  “marriage-like relationship.” And that brings serious financial  consequences for people on disability assistance like Shawn.

In B.C., a single person  who receives disability assistance can make up to $15,000 per year  without affecting their benefits, known as an allowable earnings  exemption. Any amount above that is clawed back from disability benefit  payments. That rises to $18,000 for a family with two adults where only  one is on assistance.

But the total earnings of both partners in a  marriage-like relationship count towards this total, because benefits  are allocated by household.

That means Shawn’s partner’s income could  be counted along with any of their own income. If the combined income  exceeds $18,000, Shawn’s benefits could be cut. 

Shawn’s partner does not receive assistance  and works outside the home, but in a high cost-of-living area their  income alone could not support the couple.

Shawn said it leaves them and many others  with a stark choice — go ahead and move in with a partner and hide the  relationship, or live alone in deep poverty.

“That form of structural violence, it  limits our ability to have relationships,” said Shawn. “It criminalizes  poverty and disability because we have to make a choice: do we follow  the rules and be homeless?”

Shawn and other people who receive  provincial disability assistance say the rules are symptoms of a system  that polices their lives and treats them as less deserving and  independent than able-bodied British Columbians.

They note that last week’s increase in assistance rates  still leaves them below the poverty line. The $175 increase is less  than the $300 a month in COVID-19 emergency aid they had been receiving  until Dec. 31.

Shawn and others say a government expert panel report  that recommended against a universal basic income in B.C. killed the  possibility of much-needed transformational change for people with  disabilities.

“As marginalized people trying to fit  within a system that is failing us the way B.C.’s is, we are not able to  advocate for ourselves when we live through as much of the structural  violence that is going on within the system, which is quite severe,”  said Shawn. “And that is one of the big issues that I found with the  failure to recommend a universal basic income.”

Shawn, who’s in their 40s, went ahead and  moved in with their partner. But they haven’t reported the change to the  province and keep the information secret from most people to prevent  their benefits from being cut. The Tyee is using another name and  withholding some identifying details to protect their financial  security.

Shawn said it’s exhausting to hide such an  important part of their life, but it’s the only way they can afford to  live close to specialized care they require for neurological conditions  and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Assistance rates currently  allocate $375 for shelter, a budget nearly impossible to match outside  of limited subsidized housing. In Victoria, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is more than $1,600.

Shawn pays less than half of the rent and  shared expenses like groceries while living with their partner, which  allows them to afford medications and some small comforts.

But the arrangement puts pressure on their  relationship, both financially and emotionally. A previous relationship  ended in large part because they couldn’t get married because Shawn  would be at risk of losing assistance benefits.

“It steals my dignity,” they said. “It puts a block in our relationship, to be honest, and how deep that relationship can go.”

“I’m not the only one doing this to survive.”

The Tyee spoke to two others in similar situations who did not want to go on the record for fear of losing income or housing.

All three agreed that the lack of support — not their conditions or disabilities — makes their lives so difficult.

Shawn and others The Tyee spoke to also  can’t bring up these issues during government consultations or to case  workers without risking their incomes.

Heather McCain, executive director of  Creating Accessible Neighbourhoods in Vancouver, said the system makes  disabled people and others on income assistance choose between breaking  the law or losing their housing and support system. It forces them into  hiding. 

For those on income assistance, where rates  are much lower and earnings exemptions range from $6,000 to just over  $10,000 annually, the risk can be even more necessary.

“People feel like they have to hide  relationships in order to survive,” said McCain, who lives with  invisible and visible disabilities.

It comes down to sub-poverty-level  assistance rates, McCain said. The rates are not enough to live on,  especially for someone with costly medical needs that often aren’t  covered by provincial health plans, they noted. Counselling,  medications, physiotherapy and assistive technologies are all essential  to a good quality of life, but only a fraction are covered, if at all.

And allocating benefits based on household  income rather than individual earnings forces disabled people to be  financially dependent on their partner, or assumes they have family  support that many do not.

“The idea that somebody looks after them is  very paternalistic,” said McCain, “in keeping with kind of a charity  model of other people looking after disabled people as opposed to  disabled people looking after themselves.”

McCain works with a lot of people who are  unable to leave abusive and unhealthy relationships because they have  lost access to benefits and need their partner’s income to survive, or  because they know they could not afford to live on their benefits alone.

It’s a dynamic that worsens the  disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence and fraud  disabled people face, particularly disabled women. About 60 per cent of them will face some form of violence in their lifetime.

The only times McCain has seen people able  to leave these kinds of situations has been when family or friends could  help pay for the costs of moving and living while the person waited for  their benefits to be reinstated.

The risk of being cut off benefits goes  beyond lost income, McCain noted. It could also mean losing a place in  subsidized housing or programs that provide employment supports and  reduced rates for transit passes — essentially losing an entire  ecosystem of supports.

McCain would like people to remain eligible  for their subsidized housing and other services for a year or longer  after they start working or are no longer eligible for assistance. It  would help them plan for the future without being punished for working.

And for those who are unable to work, higher rates would assure quality of life not dependent on their labour, McCain noted.

Andrew Robb, a staff lawyer with the  Disability Alliance of BC’s Law Clinic, said people trying to protect  their benefits by proving they aren’t in a marriage-like relationship  make up a significant number of the clinic’s cases.

“The complaint we often hear is, ‘If I  weren’t disabled, I could be employed, I would keep income regardless of  my spouse, but because I’m disabled, my income is dependent on my  spouse,’” said Robb. “It makes them think twice about whether they can  get into a relationship at all, because it reduces their independence in  a way that leaves them fewer choices.”

The province considers a relationship marriage-like if two people are socially and financially interdependent, Robb explained.

Evidence of that can be how they share  household expenses, whether they share a bedroom or how they present  themselves to landlords or family, he said.

Recently, the province increased the length  of time a couple could live together before it would investigate  whether a relationship was marriage-like from three to 12 months.

It was a win for many, Robb said, but tying benefits to an individual’s income rather than a household would have more impact.

“It takes time to get benefits if you have  to restart the process. A person is really most vulnerable when they’re  most in need,” said Robb. “I can’t condone someone not reporting their  relationship to the ministry, but I certainly understand why people feel  compelled to make those choices.”

In an interview, Social Development and  Poverty Reduction Minister Nicholas Simons said relationship secrecy is  an issue he became aware of more than 30 years ago when he was a  financial assistance worker.

“I did remember hearing about issues like  that. And I know that policy has evolved, but I think, mostly for the  better,” said Simons, who would not speak to what the ministry was  considering to address these issues.

“I’m going to look into that as well, because that’s really tied very directly to that issue of dependence.”

Many of those choices about what to  disclose have become even more dire for the 137,000 people on disability  assistance during the pandemic, which introduced a new level of  uncertainty. 

Last week, the province announced it would end the monthly pandemic top-up to benefits. It had provided $300 a month from April until December 2020 and $150 from January to March 2021.

In its place, Simons announced a permanent increase of $175 per month.

“This is the largest permanent increase,  and the third increase since we formed government in 2017,” he said.  “It’s the largest single increase in the history of British Columbia.”

But even with the increase, an individual  with no children like Shawn will receive $1,358, approximately $300 less  than the poverty line in Canada, defined by the market basket measure  used by Statistics Canada. And it is $661 less than the $2,019 per month Statistics Canada says is the poverty line for a single adult living in a B.C. city of more than 100,000 people.

The market basket measure compares the cost  of a bundle of essential goods and services, like housing and  transportation, in a particular community to an individual or  household’s income to determine whether or not they live in poverty.

In Canada, about 30 per cent of disabled  people live in poverty, nearly three times the national poverty rate of  11 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. About one in five people,  or 6.2 million, in the country are disabled.

The province’s decision to halve the $300  monthly top-up in January triggered a suicidal episode for Shawn. “There  was no way of planning my life or my finances when they took away  $150.”

The rates are a slap in the face, says  Shawn. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit introduced during the  pandemic provided newly unemployed Canadians with $500 a week or $2,167 a  month — 60 per cent more than people on disability assistance receive.

“People on disability assistance have been  living in an emergency for years, decades, their entire lives, before  this pandemic,” said Shawn. “It’s not like their lives have improved  during the pandemic. Costs have gone up.”

When the pandemic hit, Shawn left their  part-time job due to stress that made it difficult for them to think  clearly or walk. They qualified for the $2,000-per-month CERB, but not  the one-time $1,000 provincial supplement, simply because they were on  disability assistance.

“And because I’m not well enough to go back  to work, I don’t receive any of the federal programs that came in to  replace CERB,” they added.

CERB was the closest thing to a large-scale  basic income Canada has seen in quite some time and has since been  transitioned into the country’s pre-existing employment insurance system  which requires recipients to search for a job.

But in its January report  to the government on the possibility of a universal basic income in  B.C., an academic expert panel opted instead to recommend sweeping  reforms to the existing social safety net.

Among them was a targeted basic income for  certain populations, like disabled people, those fleeing domestic  violence and youth aging out of care.

Disability assistance rates should be  raised by $500 per month to reach the poverty line, the report  recommended, and universal extended health benefits should be provided  to all low-income people.

Shawn was heartened to see the recommendations. 

But the proposed changes don’t go far  enough in addressing the structural violence of a disability assistance  system that is, in their view, beyond reform and needs to be entirely  replaced.

Problems include the process for deciding  who qualifies for benefits in the first place, which often requires  medical documentation and other proof that is expensive and  time-consuming to procure. It took Shawn nearly a year to obtain the  form to even apply for benefits he was eligible to receive.

Lindsay Tedds, an economist at the  University of Calgary who co-authored the basic income panel report,  said its recommendations aimed to make disability assistance more  flexible and accessible.

They recommended people with substance use disorders, addiction and mental health challenges be eligible for benefits as well.

“You’re going to have times in your life  where you can work, and not work, and you should be able to move in and  out of the system flexibly without being kicked out,” Tedds said in  response to a question from The Tyee at an online panel on basic income. “You should be able to work without your benefits being clawed back.”

After the report was released, the Ministry  of Social Development and Poverty Reduction said it would take the 65  recommendations into consideration in its planning and preparations for  the April budget.

Simons declined to say which specific recommendations would be incorporated into the coming budget, which is set for April 20.

“My interest and the interest of my  government is to continue to find… ways and strategies that will  continue to reduce our poverty rates,” he said.

But the government’s decision to cancel the  $300 COVID-19 increase casts doubt on the province’s commitment to  ending poverty for disabled people, said Shawn and others The Tyee spoke  to.

Simons said the province wanted a permanent  increase to give people receiving assistance “predictability” as  vaccination efforts ramp up and B.C. sets its sights on a post-pandemic  reality.

Simons did not respond directly when asked  why the province didn’t increase permanent rates by the same $300 or the  panel’s recommended $500 after a crisis he acknowledged has  disproportionately affected people on assistance or who are low-income.

“I would love to be aiming as high as  possible to have a positive impact on people living on disability  assistance or on income assistance,” he said, “and knowing that the  challenges that exist and that the recovery needs to be strong and needs  to provide resilience, I think a permanent increase was what was  necessary.”

Simons pointed to the B.C. poverty reduction strategy, TogetherBC,  which targets a 25-per-cent reduction of overall poverty by 2024 as  evidence of the province’s commitment to poverty alleviation. 

But he would not commit to raising  assistance rates to the poverty level while in office. “Our TogetherBC  strategy sets out our goals and our timelines.”

McCain and Shawn both want to see meaningful, confidential and truly accessible consultation with the end users of programs.

And Shawn wants an independent third-party  review into the harm done to people by the current system with power to  make recommendations that are binding on government.

People on disability can’t safely critique  the system “because it puts us in a position of instability and risk,”  they said. “My life would be very different if I got help.”

Shawn has a bachelor’s degree and has worked in a variety of jobs before their conditions made it impossible to work full time.

They thought of pursuing further education.  But that would have required student loans and the loan funding for  housing would be counted as income and could have resulted in a clawback  of disability benefits. The risk of taking on loan debt was too great.

Shawn knows people with disabilities are 3.5 times as likely to consider suicide because of the challenging — but solvable — circumstances they face.

“I’m a law-abiding person, I’m a person who  wants to contribute positively to society,” said Shawn. “It hurts me  every day to be put in a position where my survival is based on  committing fraud.

“Am I a bad person for that? The provincial government thinks so."