Poverty and despair among seniors

Seniors acknowledge that they spend most of their budget on essential needs, such as housing and food. Moreover, this age group, who mostly live on fixed incomes, are likely to fall into a precarious situation with rising costs for such services as electricity, heating, public transportation, telephone and cable, as well as medication insurance.

To better define the problems, a socio-demographic study, being conducted jointly with the CLSC Bordeaux-Cartierville, is drawing a portrait of seniors in Saint-Laurent and Bordeaux-Cartierville. "We will study the living conditions of seniors, one of which is poverty," said Abdou Lat Fam, a community organizer with the CLSC Saint-Laurent. "We want to look into this question, because it is felt that there is a problem when people are not at ease to speak about it. We want to improve their quality of life."

The assessment of the social development situation in Saint-Laurent in 2004 defines poverty as being the condition under which a human being is deprived of the resources, the means, the choices and the necessary capacity to reach their economic autonomy and support their social inclusion.

According to the National Advisory Council, seniors will make up 18% of the population of Canada by 2021, compared to 12.5% in 2000. The proportion of seniors is already 17.5% in Saint-Laurent, versus 15% in Montreal, where the rate of seniors is higher than in five other large Canadian cities: Winnipeg, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary.

The National Advisory Council feels that seniors do not have full access to the necessary resources to age in comfort and in health. This ageing of the population brings growing needs in terms of policies, programs and adapted services.

Housing represents one of the largest expenditures that seniors face. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, more than half of seniors living alone had pressing housing needs in 2001. That is 30% of their income was still not enough to pay the average rent of affordable housing in their area.

In 2000 representatives from the Saint-Laurent community held a forum entitled "hunger justifies the means." At the time they highlighted food safety, since several organizations in the district set up collective kitchens and support for groups purchases and food drop off services. "These activities are used to break the isolation of disadvantaged people," said Lat Fam of the CLSC.

Regional budgets authorized to address poverty are based on data which includes areas in Saint-Laurent that are better off. They do not account for variations in the standard of living of Saint-Laurent residents. Centraide fortunately adjusted its assistance in Saint-Laurent and wishes to implement sustainable solutions in the fight against poverty.