Toronto Star Wed 18 Nov - Food Grains

Richard J Brennan in the Toronto Star reported Wednesday that the food bank visits soar as jobs disappear. It cites that close to 800,000 Canadians, roughly the equivalent of New Brunswick's population visited food banks in march, according to hungerCount 2009 survey. That represents an increase of 120,000 users or 18% over March 2008. Of the 800,000 individuals 72,000 were for the first time. This is the largest ever increase in food bank use, reported Food Banks Canada. There are 700 food banks in Canada.

Toronto's daily Bread Food Bank reported a similar trend, from a result of people loosing their jobs or having the hours cut very severely.

Habitat Halton

This month celebrates 10 years of Habitat in the region. Ten deserving families across halton now have a place to live. halton's region's 2008 Annual report identified a 300-800 unit gap for government assisted housing and affordable private housing. At the end of 2008, there were 1,888 households on waiting lists for social housing. Habitat fears the numbers will be much higher this year with the economic downturn.
Habitat sells homes to low income families on a non-profit, no-interest basis and provides interest free mortgages. The homeowner pays about 30% of their income toward the mortgage and each homeowner contributes about 500 hours into the build. This is part of a community feature by Christina Commisso that appeared in the Milton Champion on Wednesday November 11, 2009. It marks the launch of their ReNew program where they plan to build 28 properties in the region in the next 5 years. The full report indicates about 1,200 Halton residents becomes homeless due to the lack of affordable housing.

Home Suite Hope

We have spoken with Wendy Perkins, Exec Director at Home Suite Hope about our efforts to arrange housing for homeless in Milton. She is supportive of our initiatives and informed us of upcoming ACT committee meeting, made up of about 70 people. She will talk to the chair of the group with the objective of inviting us to attend.

5th wheel

We had met with the owners of the 5th wheel in Milton in order to see if we could pay for transitional housing shelter at their motel based on a similar experience by another group in Burlington. Unfortunately, the owners are not keen given previous experience with homeless. There are no cooking in the rooms and the largest room is 2double beds. So we are now looking at other solutions.