本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Toronto's booming economy in the 1990s helped widen the gulf between the rich and an increasing number of poor, a report said yesterday.
The same boom, and the beginning of the following slowdown, also saw Toronto, once better off than the rest of the country, fall significantly behind by 1999, the United Way report said.
While the decline was felt across the board, an alarming number of single-parent households, children and seniors fell into dire circumstances.
"Toronto is now spinning into decline and we need action to reverse it," said United Way executive director Frances Lankin, who presented the report by the United Way and the Canadian Council on Social Development.
The report, which points to a shrinking middle-class and worsening poverty in Toronto's inner suburbs and some inner-city neighbourhoods, is also a portent for the booming 905 area, warned Lankin.
She said United Way agencies in the region surrounding Toronto are increasingly reporting the same kind of social decline her agency confirmed in Toronto.
Shobha Adore, executive director of Braeburn Neighbourhood Place and Boys and Girls Club in Rexdale, fought tears yesterday describing women who walk an hour and a half to pick up bags of used clothing, apartments that house multiple families and the 80 per cent of Braeburn food bank users who are children.
In the report titled, A Decade of Decline, the United Way blames the growing gap between the poor and well-off on the high cost of housing, declining real incomes, reduced government income supports and a stagnant minimum wage. And it warns there will be drastic consequences in health care and social resources if the trend isn't reversed.
The United Way uses the "low income measure" to determine poverty. Its definition of poverty is having an income of less than half the median income of a family of the same size and age composition for all of Canada. This means the poverty cutoff for single parent family in Toronto is $17,780, while the cutoff for a family of two parents and two children is $25,400.
The study shows single parent families in Toronto were particularly hard hit with a median income drop of 18 per cent — from $29,900 in 1990 to $24,600 in 1999 — a $5,300 reduction. But two-adult households also suffered a 13 per cent, or $7,700 decline in median income, from $59,000 to $51,000 over the same period.
Singles fared nearly as badly, with their median incomes falling 12.5 per cent from $23,200 to $20,300, a drop of $2,900. Across Canada, median incomes dropped 2 per cent in the same period.
And the report showed Toronto is becoming increasingly polarized with middle-income families declining from 65.2 per cent to 56.9 per cent, a frightening trend, said Lankin.
"The strength of middle-income earners is a source of stability in our community," she said.
At the same time, those with incomes less than $30,000 rose from 16.8 per cent to 20 per cent by 1999. The number of families with incomes of more than $100,000 also grew from 18 to 23.2 per cent.
Toronto suffers from disproportionate and deepening poverty, particularly among children, single parent households and seniors. The city's poverty rate grew to 23.3 per cent from 22.6 per cent between 1995 and 1999, compared to a national figure of 19.1 per cent, which remained stable in the 1990s.
The largest increase was among seniors, with 11,300 more living in poverty in 1999 compared to 1995, a 3 per cent increase.
And while single-parent family poverty actually declined by 1.3 per cent in the rest of Canada, in Toronto 2.6 per cent more single-parent families fell below the poverty line.
Poverty among the city's children also rose in the last half of the decade to 32.3 per cent in 1999, compared to the Canadian average which remained at just over 25 per cent through that period.
The United Way reported a third of the country's immigrants lived in Toronto during the '90s and in 1996 more than half of Canadian immigrants lived in poverty. Despite the skills qualifications required to enter Canada, the report says many immigrants are under-employed and suffer from racial discrimination.
"I've got highly qualified IT people who come in every day looking for work," said Irene Arruda, executive director of Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office, which has computers for community use. It is a hub of services for the area, including its large immigrant population. She said the agency is watching Canadian immigration policy closely.
"We are seeing people coming in with a lot of skill sets under the impression they are needed here and they run into downsizing and discrimination," she said.
Thorncliffe Neighbourhood office is in the Don Mills Rd./Eglinton Ave. E. area, which is one of four neighbourhoods identified in the report as being severely stressed.
Its poverty rate grew 8.3 per cent between 1995 and 1999. The neighbourhood's population grew 40 per cent, compared to 8 per cent across Toronto and the number of children under 14 increased by 113 per cent.
"We're beginning to hear stories from seniors who can't afford their apartments," said Arruda.
The report also documents similar issues in the Jane/Finch neighbourhood, Agincourt, Regent Park and Moss Park.
Lisa Dwyer, 29, went to Thorncliffe Public School when there was one junior kindergarten class. The school now has more than 450 children in junior kindergarten and kindergarten and the school has 44 portables.
Dwyer, a married mother of two pre-schoolers, hopes to buy a house eventually but it won't be in Thorncliffe. "It's too crowded and it affects the school," she said. "I have some patience but I can't wait an hour for a swing."
Shireen Ahmed, 24, attends a mother-child drop in at Thorncliffe Neighbourhood Office's children's centre. She said crowding is an issue but she "loves the culture" of the neighbourhood.
"For the number of people, there's an imbalance of services," she said, but noted that she knows of 10 women she could call in the community if she needed help.
Ahmed, a Muslim, grew up in Halifax with her Pakistani-born parents. There's diversity in Thorncliffe she didn't grow up with and she wants her children be exposed to cultures other than her Pakistani background and the non-Muslim majority in Halifax.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net