Tikva Housing Society

Concerns over inflation

Last fall, the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver surveyed the impact of inflation on its community partner organizations. As with many recent reports on the effects of rising prices, the feedback was sobering, said Shelley Rivkin, vice-president of global and local engagement at Federation, which conducted the survey.

When asked about how the rise in food and fuel will affect their ability to provide the same level of service, 95% of the organizations that responded said they were either concerned or very concerned about inflation. A similar response was returned when community members were asked about paying school, camp, synagogue or Jewish community centre membership fees.

For social service and housing providers, the main concerns were the level of care, due to reduced staffing; the number of affordable housing units available; food programs for students and families in need; and low-cost (or free) social and recreational programs for seniors. Other organizations cited concerns about the future of kiddush and seniors lunches, volunteer appreciation, building maintenance and upkeep, prepared meals for food bank recipients, and membership subsidies.

The survey notes that rising costs are affecting, to varying degrees, the ability of agencies to maintain their current level of service, recruit and retain staff, raise funds and balance budgets. Some organizations have been unable to provide staff with a cost-of-living-adjustment raise, thereby threatening their capacity to retain staff and deliver programming, and higher salary expectations mean that positions are vacant for longer, limiting the ability to grow programs. Food costs for hot lunches are up 20% and there has been a 25% increase in salaries for kitchen staff.

Rivkin stressed that, in the four months since the survey was conducted, costs have come down for some items, but the price of food continues to rise.

“Our agencies and synagogues survived COVID, and we thought we were past the difficult times,” she said. “However, we are now seeing the impact of inflation on them. When we decided to undertake the survey, we had no idea about the depth and breadth of the impact of inflation or that these pressures would affect everything from staff salaries to the cost of paper supplies. We are now working with our community agencies to explore ways to reduce costs. We recently hosted a lunch-and-learn featuring speakers from the Buying Networks Canada.”

The Buying Networks Canada is a Toronto-based organization that helps nonprofit, charitable and faith-based organizations across Canada save money on such things as food and beverages, office supplies and equipment, maintenance, and numerous other products and services.

In the summer of 2022, Jewish Family Services (JFS), one of Federation’s community partners, released information on the impact of inflation. Among the points in the JFS report were an increase in the number of clients asking for food voucher assistance, a record number of intakes for home support and the challenges Ukrainian newcomers on a limited income face with rents and food costs.

Food insecurity, according to JFS, has grown in recent months and the organization expects an increase of 150 new clients, if trends continue. Higher prices at the gas pump have resulted in fewer volunteer drivers. The greater need for services has translated into a higher workload for JFS staff.

“Community that JFS serves is on fixed income, and those individuals are the ones who suffer tremendously during this time,” said Tanja Demajo, chief executive officer of JFS. “What that means for JFS is that the number of people reaching out for help is on constant rise. Between the rise in prices, number of clients and cost of staffing, we as an agency have to ask ourselves what is our priority. This is the time when we get clarity, more than ever, who we are and what we need to do. Our goal has always been not to leave anyone behind. We hope that, even during the challenging times such as these, we can remain true to that.

“Since COVID,” she added, “staffing has been a significant challenge. It is very uncomfortable for many agencies to speak about issues of salaries, but the reality is that the professional staff has always been underpaid in the nonprofit world. With inflation, this issue has further grown and, unless taken seriously, it may impact the whole social sector in irreversible ways. Providing social support is based on relationships, and with constant changes those relationships get eroded.”

Anat Gogo, executive director of Tikva Housing Society, another Federation partner agency, is also concerned. “Inflation significantly impacts the delivery of housing programs due to increased costs and reduced availability of resources,” she said. “It can also make it more difficult for low-income households to afford adequate housing, so we are reaching out to our donors to assist us in ‘gapping’ the additional … funding needed to meet our commitment to the delivery of affordable housing and rent subsidies.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Let’s create more land

In his December presentation, Michael Geller showed this photo of a building in Paris, where modular housing was added atop an existing apartment building to provide more units.

An old adage says that investing in real estate is always a good idea. “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore,” said Mark Twain. But local housing guru Michael Geller rejects this notion.

“I think sometimes you have to create land,” Geller said. Looking at Vancouver from above, he said, you see a lot of green and a lot of blue. But you also see a lot of grey. Making better use of parking lots, rooftops, the top levels of parkades and underused space around existing buildings are among the ways Geller imagines we can create more space for housing.

Geller spoke at Tikva Housing Society’s annual general meeting, held virtually on the first night of Chanukah. Tikva is a nonprofit society that provides access to affordable housing, primarily for Jewish low- to moderate-income adults and families. Its vision is “a safe, stable and affordable home for every Jewish person who needs one in Greater Vancouver.”

A screenshot from Michael Geller’s presentation at the Tikva Housing Society annual general meeting Dec. 11. It was one of eight ideas he suggested to create more space for housing.

In honour of the eight nights of Chanukah, Geller offered up eight ideas, including building houses like we build cars – in factories. Also, taking the concept of laneway housing to new heights by allowing the construction of housing on parking lots. And designing apartments that can be divided into two studio suites or opened up to create family accommodation. Plus, matching people who live alone, or in a couple, and have extra bedrooms in their house to connect with people who need housing.

He showed one instance of a high-rise complex in West Vancouver where two new low-rise buildings were constructed amid the landscaped gardens around the older buildings.

Geller was an early adopter of the concept of modular housing, having written a thesis on the subject in university. Modular housing consists of units manufactured and moved as completed (or mostly completed) structures to their temporary or permanent sites. He showed a photo of a building in Paris, where modular housing was added atop an existing apartment building to provide more units. The top levels of many urban parkades might make ideal locations for modular housing, he said, since few people park there unless the entire structure is full.

In European countries – Geller is doing work in Russia at present – families use space for more than one purpose, allowing better utilization of limited footage. Student accommodations, he suggested, could be developed by transforming a living area into a second bedroom through a pocket door or similar. Larger apartments could be made more flexible with extra external doors and tiny kitchenettes that allow one apartment to become two smaller ones – or those two smaller ones to be easily retrofitted for a growing family. He called these types of lock-off suites, “a mortgage helper in the sky.”

Identifying new municipal, provincial and federal lands for affordable housing is another option.

“I really like golfing at Langara,” Geller said. “But, I must say, if you were to take a 40-foot strip off that golf course all the way along Cambie Street, you could create a lot of land, which could be used for affordable housing and some market housing to support the non-market housing.”

He admitted that some of his golfing friends might think this is a terrible idea.

Many of Vancouver’s older residents are “over-housed,” according to Geller, meaning that one or two people might live in a three- or four-bedroom home. Not everyone would be comfortable sharing their home with erstwhile strangers, he admitted, but some would.

“They might want to share with another senior, they might want to share with a younger person who is willing to help around the house, to pick up prescriptions, to pick up food, to drive them to see friends,” he said.

Another idea Geller mooted was “the Tikva Suite.”

“Maybe we should start a program where we basically approach every member of the Jewish community who owns an apartment building and say, rent us a suite, give us a suite, and the clever accountants in the community can work out some way so there can be a tax receipt for this and that way you can have a suite in every one of those buildings,” he said. “It’s a dream, but many of the dreams I’ve had over the last 50 years actually do materialize. They take awhile, but this is not such a crazy idea.”

Geller is a planner, real estate developer and retired architect with five decades of experience in the public, private and institutional sectors. He is adjunct professor at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Sustainable Development.

Beginning with a seven-unit building in South Vancouver in 2007, Tikva Housing Society has grown to support the housing needs of 288 individuals. The society provides housing directly through three complexes – with another under construction – as well as through rent subsidies. The AGM heard that the society has net assets of about $2.6 million.

At the meeting, outgoing chair Shelley Karrel announced the launch of a new Jewish Housing Registry, an online platform for people who are looking for housing. It is a partnership between Tikva, Jewish Family Services, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the other Jewish housing societies: Vancouver Jewish Building Society, Yaffa Housing Society, Haro Park Centre and Maple Crest Apartments (which is under the auspices of Royal Canadian Legion Shalom Branch 178). The registry will provide a single source for housing applications and will also provide partners with a more accurate way of determining the scope of the community’s housing needs. (See jewishindependent.ca/jewish-housing-registry-live.)

The 2011 Census reported 26,250 people in Metro Vancouver’s Jewish community, of which more than 16% reported incomes below the low-income cutoff, giving Vancouver the second highest rate of Jewish poor in Canada. Average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Metro Vancouver is more than $2,000 a month and the vacancy rate is about one percent.

New residences open

The Ben and Esther Dayson Residences, on East Kent Avenue North, opened its doors to tenants last month. (photo from Tikva Housing)

The first tenants at the Ben and Esther Dayson Residences started moving into their new homes in late August. Managed by Tikva Housing, the 32 townhomes are located west of the River District, on East Kent Avenue North, a block from Riverfront Park.

The residences comprise four two-bedroom units (1,045 square feet), 24 three-bedroom units (1,175 square feet) and four four-bedroom units (1,305 square feet). The units were open to Vancouver-based families with one to six children, within a range of income levels. The site includes two towers that will be managed by the Fraserview Housing Co-op.

A part of the Vancouver Land Trust project, the residences share a number of amenities, such as green space and a playground. Rent will be targeted to approximately 30% of gross household income to a rent maximum. Tenants are expected to pay for hydro, phone, internet and contents insurance.

Anat Gogo, Tikva Housing’s manager of programs and donor relations, expressed her enthusiasm upon the launch. “I feel so excited for the community,” she said. “It will be a concentrated Jewish community. When you build neighbourhoods, you build community.

“The residences will also provide a home for essential workers, such as teachers, in our community,” she added.

The Dayson Residences are situated close to several daycares, elementary and high schools, as well as banks, shopping centres, grocery stores, libraries and hospitals.

The strong need for affordable housing in the region has been a prevalent concern for many years. A 2011 survey of the Greater Vancouver Jewish community identified more than 4,000 people (or 16% of the total community) who were low-income; the number included 600 children and 550 single-parent families.

To many local renters, Vancouver holds the unenviable distinctions of having the highest rents and the lowest vacancy rates in the country. At the start of the year, the rent for an average one-bedroom apartment in the city was more than $1,500 per month, while vacancy levels hovered around one percent.

Tikva Housing helps those who would be deemed “working poor” and cites the limited “life options” available to them in this expensive city. For example, to a person earning $2,000 a month, the affordable level for their rent should be a maximum of $600 per month. For the past decade especially, rents in the Lower Mainland have risen far beyond that level – thus leaving little money to set aside for food, medicine, utilities, transport or education to improve job skills.

“They save people from being on the streets. They save people from unsafe situations,” said Steve, a tenant at Tikva Housing’s Diamond Residences in Richmond. “It’s given me security. I don’t have to worry about making rent. It’s affordable. I buy our groceries. It puts me in a wonderful frame of mind. It allows me to be a good father. Without Tivka, I would not have been able to give proper care to my children.”

Tikva Housing’s stated mission is to provide a safe, stable and affordable home to every Jewish person in Metro Vancouver who needs one. Its services are geared primarily at low- and moderate-income adults and families.

It also operates the 11-unit Dany Guincher House apartments in Marpole and the 18-unit Diamond Residences cited above. Opening in early 2021 is the Arbutus Centre on the West Side – as part of a partnership with the City of Vancouver, the YWCA and the Association of Neighbourhood Houses of British Columbia – which will bring another 18 studios and 19 one-bedroom units to low- and moderate-income members of the community.

As might be expected, the number of people turning to Tikva Housing has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. In July alone, it approved a record number of eight recipients for the Tikva Housing Rent Subsidy Program.

“The subsidy allocation for the past five months amounted to just shy of $27,000 in addition to the existing allocations, and the need continues to grow,” Gogo said.

In August, Alice Sundberg, Tikva’s director of operations and housing, announced, “I am in conversation with a few private developers and nonprofit housing providers regarding potential projects in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey. I can’t say more about these opportunities at this time.”

Ben Dayson was a prominent figure in Vancouver and Richmond real estate and a philanthropist. Together with his wife Esther, they worked to help many charitable causes. Helping those in need find affordable housing was one of their primary objectives, through funds provided by the Ben and Esther Dayson Charitable Foundation.

“Our family is focused on providing funding to areas of basic needs,” said their daughter, Shirley Barnett. “Obviously, housing is one of these areas we choose to support. As my parents, Ben and Esther Dayson, were in real estate development, it seemed natural to fund a complex such as this in their memory.”

For more about the Tikva Housing Society, visit tikvahousing.org.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Housing woes in Vancouver

As housing prices in Vancouver continue to rise, people will have to be creative about, and flexible in, their living arrangements. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

Until recently, Naava Smolash was living in a collective house in East Vancouver with five roommates. The combined monthly rent for the 100-year-old character house, with high ceilings, fir floors and stained glass windows, was $2,700 and, though the inhabitants have changed over the past decade, Smolash has been a constant since she moved from Montreal 10 years ago.

What’s a collective house? “It’s people sharing spaces,” she explained. “We cook together, share our food and have a house bank account to which we all contribute money. It’s a small urban commune but the difference is that the members tend to be older, with families and professionals living together.”

Smolash’s fellow roomies, all in their 30s, included a scientist, a lawyer, an artist and a law student, while Smolash herself is a professor of English literature at Douglas College. In her spare time, she manages the Vancouver Collective House Network’s Facebook page. She estimates hers was one of 50 collective houses in the city, and that the residents of at least 10 of them are being evicted. Hers included.

Things changed this past summer when her house on Victoria Drive was sold for more than $2 million. A young family will be moving in and Smolash is stuck for a place to live. “There isn’t anywhere else we can afford,” she said. “This neighborhood is changing so quickly that only wealthy people can afford to live here, and I don’t think that’s what we want.”

She’s been talking with the Waterfront Consumers’ Cooperative, which suggested she and her roommates put in proposals for buying a house. “The problem is the co-op can’t buy a million dollar house and, even if they could, the mortgage would be $5,000 a month, which would make it unaffordable,” she said.

Smolash is feeling the panic. “We’re older, we can’t just keep moving,” she lamented. “And co-op houses tend to be rented to families, while a collective home has changing inhabitants.

“What we need is more cooperatively owned collective houses. We’re hoping that people who bought houses in the 1970s or 1980s will step up and sell it to the co-op for an amount the organization can afford. In so doing, they could create a legacy of affordable collective housing that’s cooperatively owned in East Vancouver.”

Michael Geller, a Vancouver architect, planner and developer, is sympathetic to her plight. “I think there’s a need for collective housing, and there’s a real problem here. But maybe this group should look at that $5,000 per month mortgage payment as a good way to go. While we’d like to think there’s some benevolent person in the community who might be willing to donate or reduce the price of a property, it’s been very difficult to achieve that in the past.”

Susana Cogan, housing development director at Tikva Housing Society, has a budget of $75,000 this year (down from $90,000 last year) to help subsidize the rent of those in the community who need it. “Right now, we’re helping 46 Jewish people,” she said. “Being Jewish is not a condition – we house low-income people, giving preference to Jews, so if there are two families with the same need and one is Jewish, we’d subsidize the Jewish family first.”

In February 2014, Adam M (not his real name), 57, and his wife moved to Vancouver from Montreal and the two, both shomer Shabbat, struggled to find jobs and affordable rental accommodation near the Jewish centre. Eventually, they found a one-bedroom apartment near Oak and 17th for $1,200. Tikva Housing is helping subsidize 38% of the monthly rent.

“People don’t like to ask for help,” Cogan said. “But, due to circumstances, they sometimes end up having to take it. Most of the needs arise because of unforeseen things – an illness, a divorce.”

In Adam’s case, the couple had arrived in Vancouver with some resources but depleted them before they were able to find affordable accommodation.

“Our rent subsidy program is supposed to help people for the short term, while they bridge their problems,” Cogan said, adding that each case is different, but one to one-and-a-half years is the average period of assistance.

Adam is grateful for help from the Jewish community in Vancouver but said more resources from donors are necessary. “I know a lot of religious people that would want to come and live in Vancouver with their families because of the lifestyle out west. The problem is, living close to the Jewish community is too expensive.”

Cogan said we definitely should not be encouraging people to come and live in Vancouver if they cannot afford it. Subsidies are scarce, she stressed. “We can’t assist everyone who comes here and we turn a lot of people away, only assisting those who have the most need.”

Right now, there are at least 50 people waiting for Tikva Housing’s help.

“Maybe next year we’ll have even less resources,” Cogan speculated. “But our goal is that if people come here and run out of resources, we don’t want them to be living on the street. We’ll help them find affordable accommodation.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Tikva helps increase supply

Artist rendering of Storeys in Richmond, one of two projects with which Tikva Housing Society is involved. (illustration by Duane Siegrist of Duane Siegrist-Integra Architecture Inc.)

Of the 26,000 Jews living in Greater Vancouver, 16% live below the poverty line (more than 4,200). While several organizations within the community work to support the various needs of those community members, Tikva Housing Society has been doing what it can to make sure they have a roof over their heads, as well. And, at an event on Sept. 30, the society will announce the development of two new projects within Greater Vancouver that will significantly increase the number of affordable homes available for those in need.

The first project, called Storeys, is part of a 14-storey highrise that is being built in central Richmond by a group of nonprofit housing societies. Tikva Housing will own four two-bedroom and six three-bedroom units on the top two floors, averaging 1,100 square feet each. Those units will house families earning $25,000-$55,000 per year, who will pay 30% of their income toward rent. Construction is set to begin on the building.

illustration - — The new units being built for low-income Jewish families includes townhouses in Vancouver. *(illustration by Dane Jansen of dys architecture)*

The second project – Community Housing Land Trust – will be a Vancouver-based building in which Tikva Housing will own 32 two-, three- and four-bedroom townhomes, also averaging 1,100 square feet. Residents in those units will have gross family incomes between $25,000 and $95,000 per year and will also pay 30% of their total income toward rent.

Both projects are expected to be complete in 2017.

“Vancouver is the least affordable city in Canada, with the highest rental rates,” Michael Grudman, a Tikva Housing executive board member, told the Independent. “These two projects will be the first affordable family units that will be available to the Jewish community.”

Until now, Tikva Housing has operated an 11-unit building in Marpole, the Danny Guincher House, which offers housing for individuals. They also provide rental subsidies for as many individuals or families as possible who need support for rental expenses in other facilities. However, they have never been able to keep up with the needs of the community.

Grudman said Tikva Housing is currently providing rental subsidies for seven singles, one couple and 10 families, for a total of 46 people.

“There are many more applicants waiting for support,” he said. “We can always use additional funding.”

The two new projects are being supported by the Diamond Foundation, the Ben and Esther Dayson Family Foundation, the Lohn Foundation, the Zalkow Foundation and various other donors, as well as government agencies.

Tikva Housing has also been supported by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, first as a housing society set to determine the housing needs of the community 20 years ago, then as an active participant in supporting those needs since 2006.

The Sept. 30 announcement event will take place at 6:30 p.m. at Schara Tzedek Synagogue. An RSVP to [email protected] is suggested. For more information on Tikva Housing Society, go to tikvahousing.org.

Kyle Berger is Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver sports coordinator, and a freelance writer living in Richmond.

Housing groups meet

On June 14, the board and staff members of all the Jewish housing societies met to discuss the progress they have made, the issues they are facing both collectively and individually, and how they can work together to solve them. Attendees included members from societies for seniors (Louis Brier Home and Hospital and Weinberg Residence, Vancouver Jewish Building Society and Haro Park Centre), singles and families (Tikva Housing Society) and people suffering from mental illness (Vancouver Yaffa Housing). Though there have been discussions in the past, this Jewish Housing Forum was the first outlet that provided all the housing societies a medium to come together and voice their opinions, concerns and future goals.

There has been strong support from the housing societies, donors and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver for the societies to initiate an open dialogue and find a way to amalgamate all of their strengths to provide the best support possible for those who need it most.

“The forum was a successful, and necessary stepping stone for the future of housing in the Jewish community,” said Susana Cogan, Tikva Housing Society’s development director. “Based on the feedback we’ve received, the overall consensus is that it was very productive and we’re looking forward to meeting in the near future to exchange developments prompted by this forum.”

Some of the issues discussed included communication among housing organizations, issues residents are facing (i.e., transition from independent living to supported living), lack of awareness of the societies’ services in the community, and donor funding. Upon breaking into groups to discuss these issues, participants agreed on a number of suggested solutions, such as more communication among societies, holding regular meetings to exchange information, the sharing of resources, the need to access more units for community members and working together when dealing with acquisitions.

All of these housing societies are continuing to excel independently, so exploring the ways they can work together demonstrated how they can better serve and help support the community.

Hannah Konyves is a volunteer with Tikva Housing Society.

Narrowing the housing gap

Gil Gan-Mor of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel will be one of the speakers at Gimme Shelter on Nov. 20. (photo from Gil Gan-Mor)

A condominium used to be a potentially affordable alternative to a home for buyers in Vancouver, but condo prices are now so high that the vast majority of Vancouverites cannot afford them.

The most recent Strategics’ Vancouver Condo Report, released last week, noted that, in Vancouver, “The average low-rise project … asking price is $632,000, which eliminates many of the young couples and single buyers in this market.” Other reports using other factors have come to similar conclusions. And housing affordability is not just a problem facing this city.

On Nov. 20, New Israel Fund of Canada is hosting the event Gimme Shelter: Closing the Middle Class Housing Gap in Israel and Canada, co-sponsored by Temple Sholom, Generation Squeeze and Tikva Housing Society. It will feature speakers Gil Gan-Mor of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Dr. Penelope Gurstein of the University of British Columbia and Dr. Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze.

Gan-Mor, an attorney, will talk about the situation in Israel and provide an update on the government’s actions there since the social protests that took place in 2011. He spoke with the Independent in anticipation of his visit.

According to Gan-Mor, ACRI is the only human rights organization in Israel “that engages with the full spectrum of human rights and civil liberties.” A nonprofit, it is funded through donations and grants, but receives no financial support from the government. Its goals, Gan-Mor said, “are to protect and promote human rights in Israel through a combination of litigation, policy advocacy and public outreach. Specifically, in the Right to Housing Project, our goals are to ensure equal access to housing, fight housing discrimination, protect the right to affordable housing, promote inclusionary policies in housing and reduce segregation, combat homelessness and protect the rights of homeless people.”

Gan-Mor began working with ACRI during his second year of an NIF fellowship for graduates of its Civil Liberties Law program. He was “given the opportunity to develop a new project in ACRI,” he said, “the Right to Housing Project, which fit in with ACRI’s efforts to increase its involvement in social and economic rights.” He “didn’t expect at that time that, four years later, the right to affordable housing would be at the centre of the social protests that drew hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets.”

About the current situation, he explained, “In Israel, housing affordability is a big issue, because of two processes. First, in the last two decades, the governments in Israel dramatically withdrew from their past involvement in the housing market, leaving the role of providing housing to private market forces…. The second process is the dramatic increase in housing prices, which were already expensive…. These two processes led to a growing inequality in Israel,” as “more and more families must spend an increasing share of their income to ensure decent housing at the expense of other basic needs,” as well as “a growing polarization of residential neighborhoods, which are becoming increasingly separated on a socioeconomic level.”

Gan-Mor added, “We in ACRI view those aspects with great concern and are acting to force the government to become more active in realizing the right to housing, a right which cannot be ensured only through private market forces.”

The Gimme Shelter event will give attendees an opportunity “to question how Israel expresses the values of human rights in its domestic policy, and how they as international supporters of Israel can participate in this dialogue on building a more just society inside Israel,” said Gan-Mor. And it will offer a similar opportunity for Vancouverites to participate in the dialogue about how to build a more just society here, too, at least as far as housing is concerned.

Gimme Shelter will take place at Temple Sholom on Nov. 20, 7 p.m. For more information about the speakers and to register for the event, visit nifcan.org/our-events/upcoming.

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Poverty among Canadian Jews increasing

The poverty rate among Canadian Jews is increasing, according to the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA’s 2011 National Household Survey, and social-service providers across the country are weighing in on the issue.

“For the first time in two decades, Jewish poverty in Toronto is on the rise,” said Nancy Singer, executive director of the Kehilla Residential Program, a nonprofit housing agency in Toronto.

The survey reported that the Jewish poverty rate is climbing across the country. There are 57,195 Jews living below the poverty line, which translates to 14.6 percent of Canada’s Jews, compared to 14.8 percent among the wider Canadian population. In 2001, the Jewish poverty rate was 13.6 percent.

Montreal has the highest rate of Jewish poverty of Canada’s major cities, at 20 percent, while Ottawa has the lowest rate of 8.9 percent. Vancouver sits at 16.1 percent, Toronto at 12.9 and Calgary at 10.8.

Robin Gofine, vice-president of strategic community planning and engagement at UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, said the statistics on poverty highlighted in the survey are “sobering.”

“Poverty in the Jewish community is an issue that affects more than one in 10, certainly in Toronto, and it is imperative that poverty be atop the communal agenda,” Gofine said.

“It is not just people with low socioeconomic standing, but people who are suffering from mental and physical illness, people with disabilities, new immigrants, seniors, Holocaust survivors and single parents,” she said.

More than 24,000 Jewish people in the GTA live under the poverty line, said Fran Chodak, a Jewish Family and Child (JF&CS) social worker and coordinator of the agency’s STEP – Striving to End Poverty – project.

“We also know that the line is somewhat arbitrary and that there are a whole lot of people who struggle financially, even though they may not be defined as poor, among the working poor.”

Referring to the increased number of Jewish people in the GTA living under the poverty line, Singer noted that the cost of living in Toronto has increased. “Rents have certainly gone up and the stock of affordable housing has not,” she said. “People are struggling … and these are hard-working people who can’t make ends meet, who have two jobs.”

The numbers suggest that Montreal’s Jewish community has been hit the hardest.

“In 2001, 18.6 percent of the population was considered living in poverty, and now we’ve reached 20 percent,” said Leah Berger, senior planning associate for Federation CJA in the department of strategic planning and community relations.

“What we’re observing in Quebec is that there is a progressive offloading of services from the government on to community organizations, on to families and individuals. Services and programs that were initially provided by the government are no longer being provided and there is still a need for these. So, in response, communities, families and individuals are having to offer responses without necessarily the financial means to do so,” Berger said.

“We know government-mandated health-care premiums have increased over the last few years, while services have been reduced. Transportation costs have increased; the price of a bus pass increase[d] almost annually over the past 10 years. Finding a subsidized spot in a day care is another challenge, particularly for single-parent families. The cost of rent has increased.”

Susan Karpman, director of community services and immigration at Ometz, an employment and social service provider in Montreal, said the reason why Montreal’s Jewish community has the highest poverty rate in the country is due in large part to the city’s aging community.

Seniors make up 20.4 percent of Montreal’s Jewish community, compared to 16.9 percent in Canada’s Jewish population as a whole.

“We also have significant numbers of large families with lots of children in the observant community, and that also tilts the balance, because that community has its own challenges in terms of supporting the larger and growing communities,” she said.

In Vancouver, the most recent statistics indicate that 16 percent of Jews here live below the poverty line, an increase of about two percentage points since 2001, said Susana Cogan, housing development director at Tikva Housing Society, a nonprofit agency that works to provide affordable housing for working-age, Jewish, low-income adults and families.

Cogan also attributed Vancouver’s growing poverty rate to an “increase in [the number of] seniors and the difficulty for people to get full-time positions.

“Vancouver has the most expensive housing – rental and ownership – costs of the whole of Canada. Yes, there is an affordability problem that affects everyone, including members of the Jewish community,” Cogan said.

Mark Zarecki, a Montreal native who serves as the executive director of Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, said the poor in Ottawa used to be more diverse when immigration rates were higher, but the demographics in Ottawa have changed dramatically.

“The elderly community is much larger than it was 10 years ago, and the youth community, from ages zero to 14, has shrunk by 500 kids. It is an aging community,” he said.

Chodak, of JF&CS in Toronto, said poverty numbers are rising in the Jewish community for the same reasons they’re going up in the general community.

“The systemic issues that everyone faces in the community, Jewish people face, too. So whether there is a great deal of youth unemployment, we know that newcomers face poverty. We know single parents, when there is a family breakdown, we see single women raising children facing poverty. There are a lot more elderly living in poverty, and there are a great deal of people who are precariously employed,” Chodak said.

“Twenty-two percent of jobs in Ontario are precarious, meaning not stable, not full-time. There is no pension, no union, and these are often the jobs that youth have, that women have, that newcomers get, that older people might have, that the disabled might have, and that is where we are seeing a huge rise in poverty.”

Perhaps the first step to eradicating poverty in the Jewish community is raising awareness about the fact that it is an issue at all, Singer said.

“It’s a myth that we don’t have Jewish poor. The starting point is making the community aware that we are not much better off than the rest of the community at large. We are maybe a percentage point or two below the national average, and that is nothing to be proud of. The fact that we are [also] a well-off and generous, philanthropic community, we should be addressing the problem and helping people,” Singer said.

Robyn Segall, programs and marketing director at Ve’ahavta in Toronto, said she has encountered many people who are shocked to learn there are poor Jews.

“When we talk about our program to serve the homeless, very often the first question is, ‘But are there Jewish homeless? That’s impossible,’” Segall said.

“There certainly are Jewish people living on the streets…. People live on the street for so many different reasons – they’re escaping abuse, they are escaping myriad things, dealing with mental illness and, for each person, there is a different appropriate response, and sometimes what the community has to offer isn’t always what they need.”

Zarecki illustrated the fact that this issue is of vital importance to the Jewish community by referring to a quote he heard from a social- work professor at McGill University that stuck with him.

“A Jew is poor among Jews and Jewish among the poor,” Zarecki said. “So poverty has two impacts. It marginalizes Jews because they are not fully accepted within the Jewish community, and they are not fully accepted in the poor community [either].”

Zarecki also suspects that the Jewish poverty rate is higher than is being reported. “When you look at government statistics, they don’t include Jewish quality of life. What I mean by that is, for somebody who wants to affiliate with the community, it costs money. Eating kosher food, sending a child to a Jewish school, going to a synagogue, living near a Jewish facility – often the rents are higher in an area where there is a concentration of Jews,” he said.

“My thesis is that Jewish poverty increases assimilation…. That is why it is incumbent on Jewish communities to reach out to low-income people because … they will vanish from the community if they’re not reached out to.”

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

Tikva’s rent subsidy program

“Thank you for the gift you gave us this coming year. You made our lives less challenging during these difficult times. We are very grateful for your help and support. We have just received the cheque from you. Thank you so much for all you are doing for our family.” – A beneficiary of Tikva Housing Society’s Esther Dayson Rent Subsidy Program

Sukkot is a holiday when we think about how fragile and exposed our lives can be without a proper roof over our heads. For many families in our community, living in a temporary shelter is not a short-term symbolic choice for the holidays; it is their permanent reality. Tikva Housing Society helps individuals and families pay their rent through a growing rent subsidy program.

The program began in 2011, when the board approved a subsidy for an individual who could not be housed at Tikva’s Dany Guincher House because there was a shortage of available units. Later that year, the Ben and Esther Dayson Charitable Foundation made a commitment to fund a rent subsidy program that would allow Tikva to extend its portfolio by housing people in private market units. The program thus became the Esther Dayson Rent Subsidy Program and grew large enough to subsidize seven households. In 2013, the Tikva fund subsidized three single and four family households for a total of 19 persons.

Since October 2011, Tikva has been involved in a Richmond development to administer 10 family apartments and, since December 2012, it’s been involved in Vancouver in a development of 32 townhouse units. As construction can take years to complete and the need for affordable housing is immediate, Tikva’s board decided to put greater emphasis into fundraising for the rent subsidy program. In 2014/15, with additional help from donors (such as the PAID Foundation and the Al Roadburg Foundation), Tikva will be able to house nine singles and eight families for a total of 39 persons.

During August and September 2014, the committee received 44 applications referred through the Jewish Family Service Agency, synagogues and Jewish day schools. All applications were point scored to determine the highest need. The top 20 applicants were interviewed. To date, agreements have been signed with 12 applicants. Of the 20 applicants interviewed, four singles and one family were homeless. The subsidy will allow all those funded to look for appropriate rental units to call home.

You may wonder what sort of poverty issues the 44 applicants for Tikva’s rent subsidy program experience. Here is a sampling of some of their stories.

Five of the applicants are homeless, living on the street, in shelters and couch surfing. One of the homeless applicants is a single father with three children who arrived in Vancouver in April 2013 after losing all they had during flooding in Saskatchewan. The Esther Dayson Rent Subsidy Program allowed this family to move out of the shelter where they were living and move into a three-bedroom apartment. The children will now be enrolled in the nearby school and the father will be able to look for work in the community.

A single woman moved to British Columbia from Alberta and does not meet the one-year residency requirement to apply for government rental assistance. Rents in Greater Vancouver are much higher than in Lethbridge, and her $1,100 pension barely allows her to pay $750 for rent, while leaving only $350 for all of her other expenses.

Another family of two parents and two small children lives in Surrey. They were relying solely on a disability pension after the husband was injured in a work-related accident that left him paralyzed. The wife looks after her husband and their small children and, therefore, cannot work outside the home.

While spending a cool evening in the sukkah, remember how important it is for each and every person to have the warmth and stability of his/her own home. For more information about the Tikva Housing rent subsidy program or to donate, visit tikvahousing.ca.

Susan J. Katz is a freelance writer, pastoral-care consultant and musician living in Vancouver. Her website is susanjkatz.com.

Housing survey needs your views

Are you concerned about the cost of living and the lack of affordable housing in Vancouver? Is it preventing you, or someone you know, from feeling connected to the Jewish community? Tikva Housing Society in collaboration with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and with the support of the Jewish Community Foundation is conducting a housing needs assessment to understand and address the growing concern about affordable and appropriate housing options for the Greater Vancouver Jewish community.

The Jewish community includes you. Affiliated or not, your thoughts and stories of your experiences are important because they will help determine how we can best support the diverse and widespread Jewish population. Since the late 1870s, our community has settled in Vancouver and moved within the city as new immigration and neighborhoods were established. By the 1960s, the heart of the Jewish community stretched the Oak Street corridor, into Kerrisdale and Marpole. In recent years, families are transferring to more affordable areas, such as Richmond, White Rock, Burnaby, Coquitlam and the Fraser Valley.

The housing climate and overall population growth in Vancouver is impacting every ethnic and cultural community. According to the 2011 Statistics Canada Census, there are 26,245 members of the Jewish community living in Greater Vancouver. Of these, 4,220 Jewish people are living in poverty, including 450 children. For most, housing is often more than 50 percent of a person’s income, leaving little left for food, clothing, transportation and other costs that enable a balanced lifestyle with connections to the Jewish community. People with mental health concerns, disabilities, seniors, single parents and women fleeing abuse are among those struggling most to get by. Also vulnerable are young adults attempting to become independent while still remaining connected to the communities they call home.

Since 1948, Vancouver Jewish community organizations have successfully contributed land, buildings and grants towards affordable housing. Many of these initiatives have been in partnership with government and private partners, resulting in the management of close to 700 affordable housing units. Tikva Housing is very aware of the current issues and is working towards accessing opportunities for safe, affordable housing primarily for working-age, Jewish, low-income adults and families.

Your voice is extremely important for us. We would like every Jewish person in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland to tell us how to address their housing concerns, to enable them to either remain in, or move to, the community that best meets their needs.

Please take five to 10 minutes to complete the confidential questionnaire at surveymonkey.com/s/tikvahousingsurvey.

Tikva Housing will also be holding focus groups throughout the Greater Vancouver area to complement this information. If you need help completing the survey, would like to participate in a focus group or speak with the housing researcher, contact Hazel Orpen at [email protected] or call 604-563-3309.