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Saskatchewan landlords say they are in a “morally difficult situation”, forced to choose between evicting tenants whose welfare payments were recovered during the COVID-19 pandemic and giving up the rental income they make. reliance.
Tenants who normally pay their rent with the help of provincial income support or disability benefits saw those payments reduced or stopped because they received the Federal Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) when they were not entitled to the money and they found themselves left behind. rent.
“The landlords therefore have no rental income for those few months and, in the end, are forced to evict those tenants who have not paid the rent,” said Cameron Choquette, executive of the Saskatchewan Landlord Association.
Most provinces have instituted a ban on non-urgent evictions in the early months of the pandemic, but have since been lifted. In Saskatchewan, landlords have filed more than 1,000 eviction requests with the Office of Residential Tenancies since August 4 to persuade a sheriff to remove tenants, but there is no tracking system to measure how many tenants have simply complied with an eviction request or how many were related to the lack of government assistance.
While rent shortages usually peg landlords against tenants, Choquette is blaming the provincial government for creating a systemic problem.
“It puts us in a morally difficult situation,” Choquette said.
“Those conversations are hard to have with families who have really applied for CERB benefits in hopes of getting a leg and have really been knocked off the knees because provincial programs are now catching up on those income assistance dollars.”
People, he said, are “left without shelter, without food and shelter, in what will be a cold and snowy winter.”
Provinces have their own clawback policies
The federal CERB program, which has now ended, has provided temporary income support for people who had lost their jobs due to COVID-19, paying $ 500 a week for up to 16 weeks. Canadians who had earned more than $ 5,000 in the previous 12 months were eligible to apply, but applicants were not required to provide any proof that they had been laid off or lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
The program provided approximately $ 80 billion in grants to nearly nine million people before closing in September.
Some people with disability benefits who have low-paying jobs could qualify for CERB, but others were not. In some cases, people have switched from provincial assistance to the higher paying CERB, while in others they have collected both – what is known as a “double-dip”.
The consequences depend on where they live in Canada.
Saskatchewan and most Atlantic provinces have decided to cut provincial assistance or to recover dollar-for-dollar payments based on the amount recipients received from CERB. Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec instituted partial revisions, while British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon allowed people to retain both provincial and federal benefits.
Shane Simpson, BC’s minister for social development and poverty reduction at the time, said in an April 2 press release that it was a way to “complement federal crisis measures to support our most vulnerable populations and ensure that don’t fall deeper into poverty as a result of COVID-19. “
The office of Federal Labor Minister Carla Qualtrough, who headed CERB, said it has always been her position that the recovery of provincial assistance is “unfair” and that provinces and territories should not penalize beneficiaries of emergency income aid.
Qualtrough “has strongly argued that provinces and territories allow for federal emergency COVID-19 income and benefit measures to complement provincial support,” spokeswoman Marielle Hossack said in an email to CBC News.
Broke and homeless
Dorie Arnold, 43, is one of those who lost her provincial income support after obtaining CERB.
Regina’s resident says she is broke, homeless and worse off now than before she started receiving federal assistance.
Arnold was evicted from her two-bedroom rented suite in north-central Regina after failing to pay rent of $ 800 a month for three months. His landlord also put plywood on his unit’s door.
Until recently, he had always had enough money to make the rent despite struggling to raise about $ 1,200 a month in provincial income and disability assistance. He has chronic health problems and has not been able to work for years.
Things started to go wrong in July when he got a tip about the CERB from a stranger in a Tim Hortons parking lot.
“A lady walked up to my mom and asked if we were collecting COVID money, and we said, ‘No, we’ve never heard of it,'” Arnold said. “He said it’s free money being given to low-income families to survive while COVID is out.”
It wasn’t accurate and Arnold shouldn’t have qualified for CERB payments. She said no one explained the criteria or consequences to her.
“One call and give your social insurance [number] and then boom, you get $ 2,000. It was that easy, ”he said of the CERB trial.
Arnold said a cockroach infestation in his apartment was so “disgusting” that he used most of his CERB money – $ 4,000 in total – to replace his furniture and bedding, and then provided the receipts to his assistant. provincial social to prove it.
Social services had always paid her rent directly to the landlord, she said, so it wasn’t until the end of August that she realized she was late in renting and was cut from provincial assistance. .
“It started to get harder, I didn’t understand how I would pay [rent]. Where was I going, “Arnold said.
WATCH | Northern Canada has received more than $ 250 million in CERB funds since April:
The Canadian Emergency Response Benefit has flooded the North with cash, sending millions of relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the funding had unintended consequences. 3:50
The Saskatchewan government defends the move
The Saskatchewan government argues that CERB was for people who lost their wages, not for welfare recipients. If social workers soon found out that a person had applied for the benefit, their provincial assistance was stopped and they were told to reapply within 60 days. But if someone collected federal and provincial money at the same time and was subsequently caught, social services worked out a long-term refund program for the CERB money that includes reductions for months to come.
Paul Merriman, the former social services minister for Saskatchewan who is now health minister, told CBC Morning Edition in September that he doesn’t think the recovery is “petty”.
“We are not punishing them,” Merriman said. “Our [provincial] programs are a program of last resort and should be used this way. If someone is not reporting their income or a change in circumstances to us, they are violating the terms of the contract we have with them. “
Merriman said anyone who raised CERB from Ottawa and disability support from the province “could have received up to $ 3,600 a month for four months. That’s a considerable amount.”
Every dollar counts
Peter Gilmer of Regina Anti-Poverty Ministry, which supports low-income families, said he was troubled that the Saskatchewan government is catching up on welfare payments when it cost the province nothing for the people to raise the money. of the federal CERB.
“We see this as the province that saves money on the backs of the poorest people in the province,” Gilmer said.
“They got it back 100%. In the end it was a federal transfer to the province where they saved on CERB money instead of being a real boon to the people on the provincial income assistance programs that really needed it. I think it’s really creepy. “
Shawn Schlechter, owner of Shawn’s Property Management, which oversees 550 rental properties in Regina, said he has had to reduce rent or come up with payment plans for tenants who feel uneasy due to lower welfare payments .
Most are still receiving enough provincial assistance to cover the rent or most of it, he said, and were told that small reductions will be made for months on the subsistence allowance side of social payments.
“It’s sad because that $ 50 you lose every month can make a big difference to a single mother,” she said.
Dorie Arnold, who has been completely cut off, hasn’t received any money in months.
In October, she found food and shelter at Regina’s Easter hospital after an untreated finger wound developed a serious infection. She spent seven weeks in the hospital and was released on Thursday.
He has an appointment with social services next week and hopes to be able to return to benefit from provincial income assistance.
Until then, he’ll be surfing on the couch and rely on the kindness of family and friends to survive.
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