Our Neighbours' Voices: Will We Listen?

Jeffrey M. Karabanow is a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Social Work
at Wilfrid Laurier University.

A growing tide of poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, and
alienation is sweeping across Canada. An Ontario coalition of diverse
faith communities has gathered information about the experience of
poverty and welfare from neighborhood meetings across Ontario. The
central message of this book is that poverty results from a lack of
structural assets (i.e., fair-wage jobs and adequate housing) rather
than from personal pathologies (i.e., lack of motivation and fear of
hard work), and that financial support (welfare) must be understood as
an entitlement rather than a responsibility.

The book examines the growing “underclass” and the struggles of its
members to maintain a decent livelihood in the face of overwhelming
poverty, hunger, marginalization, stigma, and dis-empowerment. Each
chapter addresses a particular issue, such as health and employment, and
interweaves social-policy analysis with touching and in-depth profiles.
Repeatedly, we see the resiliency of marginalized, alienated, and
impoverished individuals as they struggle to survive, obtaining food
from food banks, finding part-time jobs, helping out in the community,
and maintaining some level of spirituality. By no means have they given
up: they are angry and desperate, but they are also strong, articulate,
creative, and vocal.

The last chapter suggests some solutions to poverty, including
government creation of good-paying jobs and provision of affordable
housing; increased funding of human services organizations such as food
banks, daycare centres, and shelters; and government assistance
programs, like welfare and unemployment insurance, that reflect actual
living standards. Will we listen? For all our sakes, I hope the answer
is yes.