[homeles_ot-l] Miloon Kothari & Michael Creek speak at Senate committee May 9

[Lynne Browne]

FYI on Miloon Kothari, former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, who
joined the discussion here in Ottawa in a Senate subcommittee via video
conference.

 

Link: HYPERLINK
"http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/423197"http://www.thestar.com/Ne
ws/Canada/article/423197 

 

Lynne Browne 
Coordinator, Alliance to End Homelessness 
147 Besserer Street, Ottawa ON  K1N 6A7 
613-241-7913 x 205, lbrowne at ysb.on.ca 
HYPERLINK "http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca/"www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca


 

Poverty `steals from your soul'

 Activist travels to Ottawa to describe for senators life in Toronto's
Regent Park neighbourhood

May 09, 2008 04:30 AM 

Joanna Smith 
Ottawa Bureau



Ottawa–In a forum usually reserved for peering at poverty through the lens
of bureaucratic terminology, Michael Creek showed up to talk about how being
poor actually feels.

"Poverty steals from your soul, leaving you with little or no hope," Creek,
50, told a Senate subcommittee on cities yesterday. "It robs you of all that
can be good in life. It leaves you isolated, lonely and hungry and that is
just the start of it. Every day is a struggle."

Creek was there as a director of the Ottawa-based National Anti-Poverty
Organization, along with other experts on housing and homelessness called to
share their views on taking a human rights approach to poverty issues.

He painted a moving picture of what it is like to be a poor person in his
Toronto neighbourhood of Regent Park.

"To get to my apartment, I must pass drug dealers and their victims often
high on drugs. The elevator often has syringes, human waste and garbage
covering the floor," said Creek. "Bedbugs and cockroaches have invaded my
apartment travelling through holes left for plumbing and heating."

At 37, Creek learned he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After chemotherapy and
surgery, he went into remission but developed "debilitating side effects"
that left him unable to support himself.

"I was told that I would never work again and my life in poverty began." The
former business manager said his retreat to isolation from society lasted 13
years. 

Miloon Kothari, a former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, joined
the discussion via video conference from New Delhi.

Kothari was on a two-week fact-finding mission in Canada last October.
Yesterday he reiterated to the senators his findings that homelessness and
inadequate housing here are "a national emergency" deserving a national
housing strategy.

Creek said constant federal-provincial battles over who's responsible for
social programs has caused many low-income people to develop a jaded view of
what their governments can do for them.

"No one wants to take the bull by the horns and get something done," he
said. "For years now we have had this game where we play off each other. We
will have to start looking at poverty, housing and human rights issues
especially with a more humanistic approach instead of a political approach."

Creek said deprivation has led many on low incomes to give up fighting for
their basic rights.

"One of the scary things I hear from them is that human rights does not put
any food in their tummies," Creek said, in reply to a question about how
low-income people were affected by the loss of federal funding to help them
fight for language and equality rights in court.

"Many people are losing faith in human rights ... it is the beginning sign
of a society that will fall apart. It truly concerns me when people who are
living on the edge are no longer concerned about their rights and (about)
fighting for them. Parliamentarians should find that equally scary."

 

 


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