Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
The effects of the past two years, coupled with labor shortages and inflation, are creating unsustainable pressure on the community sector.
A few weeks ago, I started a tour of community organizations supported by Centraide of Greater Montreal. My schedule is therefore filled with about ten visits per week to the neighborhoods of Montreal, Laval and the South Shore. This tour does me the greatest good: I find myself on the ground, finally, after all these months, not to say these years, of uncertainty. And above all, I talk to the true weavers of Greater Montreal’s social fabric.
Meeting workers and volunteers who work in the community sector nourishes the spirit and brings hope. They are citizens invested in their work, but above all devoted to the populations they serve. Seeing everyone’s commitment at work is remarkable. It is especially impressive to note the immense courage of these workers behind the scenes. If the news in terms of public health seems to be improving and the watchword is “to learn to live with the virus”, the community environment must also compose and live with the effects of the health crisis.
Already strained, the community sector has not had the time to take a break to refuel, as it has had to adapt to a new reality and too many people depend on its services on a daily basis.
The onset of spring brings a series of particularly worrying news for the community sector. It is grappling with the same labor shortage as the public and private sectors. With a few differences, however: the challenge is to fill positions at $17 or $18 an hour, without opportunities for growth and often without group insurance programs, among other things. It is not surprising that community organizations have such difficulty recruiting and retaining their employees: the pressure exerted on them is immense, while fatigue is always felt and, above all, the demand for their services is in high increase.
Last week, I was visiting an organization on the South Shore that tackles food insecurity. The management team told me that, since the beginning of the year, the weekly demand for emergency food had been growing week by week. New people are asking for help: workers who are becoming poorer, as well as more and more families. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the galloping inflation observed in the last six months.
During another visit to an organization in the Centre-Sud of Montreal, I was told the story of a woman who spent more than 70% of her net income on housing.
We agree that there are not many left for essential basic needs such as food.
Recently, Centraide of Greater Montreal commissioned the polling firm Léger to conduct a study on the housing expenses of residents of the Montreal metropolitan area. In this study, we find that 15% of respondents devote more than half of their income to housing and that 49% of them have experienced an increase in this expense during the year. To compensate for this increase, 66% of those who experienced an increase in their housing expenses say they have reduced their expenses in general. Of this number, 37% have already started to reduce their grocery spending.
This confirms what the organization on the South Shore that I visited confided to me: the need for food assistance is increasing.
According to the same study, 51% of tenants surveyed have a high level of anxiety about their housing costs. This last figure highlights another pernicious consequence of the last two years: the cumulative effects of poverty and social exclusion. In addition to housing issues and the increase in the price of groceries, there are effects such as increased family responsibilities due to the numerous absences of children from school or daycare due to outbreaks, precarious employment not allowing to take the desired leaves, and the lack of accessibility to mental health resources. The situation is even more difficult for certain marginalized groups, who simply do not have access to certain resources because of systemic barriers.
We can therefore speak of a perfect storm, both for the community sector and for people in vulnerable situations. We must not forget that economic development and social development go hand in hand: they are the reverse side of the same coin. We live in a society rich in its social fabric, rich in its economy and also rich in its ability to help each other.
Collectively, we must have the courage to elevate the conversation on poverty and social exclusion to target their causes and thus lay the foundations for a just, equitable and egalitarian society.