ISAC has partnered with the Wellesley Institute to create an online tool to track the impact on individuals across Ontario of the loss of the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit (CSUMB).
This tool is aimed at housing workers, social workers, community legal clinic workers, OW / ODSP caseworkers, and the many other advocates who work regularly to support people receiving OW and ODSP – those workers who have in the past used CSUMB to help their clients.
The tool allows people in these positions to input information about their clients’ circumstances, what expenses were required, the availability and adequacy of municipal replacement programs, and the outcomes and impacts on their clients. And a geographic mapping function will show the impacts graphically.
Keeping track of this information is important for a number of reasons, including:
1. It will demonstrate the importance of maintaining and/or increasing funding for municipal replacement programs, and of ensuring the creation and maintenance of local municipal replacement programs.
2. As the provincial government takes further steps to reform social assistance, they may be thinking about making similar changes to other benefits. Knowing the impact of the CSUMB change will help inform how restructuring might happen in the future.
Perhaps most importantly, the tool will allow all of us to make sure that there is a public record of what is happening to people across Ontario as a result of the loss of this designated, mandatory benefit to help people on social assistance get or remain housed.
We are not anticipating that the people who are needing assistance will be in a position to find computer access and track this information themselves – we anticipate that they they will be much more likely to instead be worrying about how to resolve their housing issues.
For the English version of the tracking tool, please click here.
For the French version, please click here.
For more information about CSUMB, see our information repository page.