As the Oct. 19 election looms, under-30s from the LEVEL program have their say.
The Tyee: With the BC NDP and BC Green Party having released their full election platforms this week, it’s unclear how much input youth have had on the parties’ ideas.
The Vancouver Foundation’s LEVEL Youth Public Policy Program aims to change that, by mentoring a new cohort of young Black, Indigenous and other people of colour every year to create their own public policies.
The 2024 cohort, 15 people between the ages of 19 and 29 who live in B.C., presented their policies at a forum at the Musqueam Cultural Centre at the mouth of the Fraser River on Sept. 26.
Often based on the individual’s lived experiences, the policies addressed everything from housing to child and family support to sex worker rights and First Nations’ self-determination.
Using personal experience as a basis for public policy is often seen negatively when done by Black, Indigenous and other people of colour, guest speaker Larissa Crawford said. But she encouraged the assembled young people to embrace the power using their experiences to back up public policy.
“Your lived experience is what is going to make this work effective, relevant and impactful. And it’s something that no one else can take away from you,” Crawford said.
The Tyee selected three policies pitched by LEVEL policymakers based on their relevance to the upcoming election: housing for low-income youth in Vancouver; affordable and safe housing for seniors in Vancouver; and ending the separation of Indigenous and Black families in the provincial child welfare system.
Better support for families to prevent child apprehensions
Roberta Longclaws’ negative experiences with the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s child welfare system informed her policy, which calls for greater supports for Indigenous, Black and other families of colour while their children are still at home.
“They took my children for five and 3 1/2 years and had no plan of returning my children to me,” Longclaws, 28, an Indigenous mother of four, said during her presentation.
“I worked very hard to be able to see them come home. But it didn’t come without many complications and hardships.”
In B.C., 69.2 per cent of the 4,384 kids currently in government care identify as Indigenous, despite the fact that Indigenous children make up less than 10 per cent of kids.
The NDP has pledged to break down child protection data for other racial groups. It does not currently make this information available.
In Ontario, where this data is available, Black children are 2 1/2 times as likely to be taken into government care as white children.
“I was told I would never be a good enough parent for my children,” Longclaws said. “They wanted to adopt my children out and never see them come home.”
Longclaws’ policy calls for parenting classes, therapy and/or housing supports for families at the first signs that they are needing help — well before the point of removing children from the home.
Longclaws said she was offered the additional services and supports her family needed only after her children were taken.
The first social worker assigned to Longclaws’ case did not believe she would be capable of caring for her children, she said, and did not give the young mother the chance to prove otherwise. But, she said, the second social worker assigned to her case did help because she listened to her.
“She worked with me to be able to find out who I am as a person, the traumas I had gone through, and she changed my perspective on how it could be run,” Longclaws said, adding that social workers need more employer support to do their jobs, too.
“Without this worker, I don’t think my kids would have come home.”
Federal legislation passed in 2019 returned child welfare and protection jurisdiction to First Nations, Métis and Inuit bodies. B.C. signed its own Indigenous jurisdiction legislation in 2022 and has already begun signing community agreements with individual nations on how child welfare will be run, as not every nation is immediately ready to take over every service the ministry currently provides.
Earlier this year a federal government funding deal promising $47.8 billion over 10 years was announced for First Nations specifically. But the process of building capacity and infrastructure for 600 nations countrywide to create their own care systems for their members will take time.
This past July, NDP Children and Family Development Minister Grace Lore said the province would overhaul the provincial child protection system, following the daylighting of horrific abuse of two First Nations kids in foster care, one of whom died from his injuries. A cross-government committee on vulnerable children, youth and families has been convened and already started meeting before the writ dropped.
Last month, B.C.’s NDP government signed an additional accord on First Nations’ right to self-determination and jurisdiction over child well-being with the First Nations Leadership Council. On Sept. 30, Jeremy Y’in Neduklhchulh Williams began his role as the ministry’s first Indigenous child welfare director.
However, there is no mention of child welfare or protection in the NDP election platform.
The BC Green Party promises ministry reforms including aligning ministry social worker standards, oversight and practices with that of the BC College of Social Workers; staff anti-racism and anti-stigma training; preventing versus reacting to family crises; and advancing Indigenous jurisdiction and providing culturally appropriate services.
The BC Conservatives’ “ideas” web page does not contain any references to the Ministry of Children and Family Development or child welfare or protection programs.
Housing for low-income youth
Youth outreach worker Ché Curtis Clearsky, 25, wants to see more low-income housing set aside for young people aged 18 to 25 living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Clearsky, who is First Nations from the Lil’wat Nation in Mount Currie and the Kainai Nation Blood Tribe, noted that at $2,700 per month, Vancouver has the highest one-bedroom rents out of all major Canadian cities.
“This raises the question: Who can afford to live in this city? Especially when minimum wage workers take home $2,500 after taxes per month,” he said during his presentation.
Clearsky lives in East Vancouver and works with youth in the Downtown Eastside through Watari, a non-profit counselling and support service based in the neighbourhood.
Every single youth he encounters, he said, needs government or non-profit organization subsidies in order to be able to afford rent.
Instead of subsidizing individual renters, Clearsky wants to see all in-development and future housing builds set aside a certain number of units specifically for low-income youth, where rents are at least 20 per cent below market rate.
He also suggested tax deductions to encourage landlords to set aside accessible, affordable rentals for low-income youth. Clearsky would like to see this plan scaled across the province.
“With many new developments being built around dense metropolitan areas in Vancouver, such as the Broadway Plan, the City of Vancouver now has an opportunity to allocate these new units in an equitable manner,” he said.
Many young people in the Downtown Eastside have had experience in government child protection and foster care, he added, and have lost government support when they turned 19. (Additional supports are available for such youth, but they have to apply for them; this can act as a barrier.)
“We can create stable environments for youth to flourish in,” he said.
In an interview with The Tyee, Clearsky emphasized that units should be available across Vancouver. But ensuring safe and affordable housing for young people in the maligned Downtown Eastside neighbourhood is a key part of his vision.
“Where there’s people, there’s going to be kids. You can’t change that,” he said. “So if we have more sanctuaries or safer places for them to be in these locations, I think that would be great.”
None of the main parties are campaigning on youth-specific housing promises, though the BC Greens have promised second-stage housing for people leaving an institution or program, including youth leaving the child welfare system, to prevent homelessness. They also pledged youth from care would receive an unspecified guaranteed basic income, while raising disability and income assistance rates to $2,400 per month.
The current NDP government has been criticized for uncoupling “social housing” from low-income definitions and tying it instead to policies such as housing income limits — meaning a two-bedroom unit in “social housing” might require an annual income of $85,000.
BC Housing has said that current renter support programs are not keeping up with increasing housing costs. The NDP is promising more land for non-profits and co-ops, which, along with social housing builds, will have new additional height allowances.
They promise to prioritize non-profit housing builds near transit centres, cut red tape that delays all non-profit housing builds and replenish the existing Rental Protection Fund that allows non-profits to purchase and protect affordable rental buildings. A new housing infrastructure fund would be on offer to encourage municipalities to build more housing, too, though that includes market-rate units.
Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad has said the government needs to remove legislation requiring more density in urban areas, saying the market should be allowed to determine housing availability and costs.
He has also pledged to bring in the “Rustad rebate” — up to $3,000 per month in income tax rebates for renters and mortgage holders.
Clearsky told The Tyee leaving housing up to the free market is not a long-term solution.
“That could easily be monopolized. People could hoard properties and prices would just get higher and higher,” he said. “There’s no cap on that.”
Housing for seniors
Prisca Egbebiyi, 29, is concerned about the other end of the housing-need age spectrum: affordable, safe and accessible housing for seniors in Vancouver.
Egbebiyi, who works with seniors in the Downtown Eastside, dedicated her policy to her grandmother, Nan, who lived with her family when Egbebiyi was growing up.
“She showed us so much love and compassion and brought endless joy to our hearts,” she said. “This initiative, in many ways, is reflective of the care and respect she taught me to have for elders, and I hope we can extend that same care to all our seniors in our city.”
Egbebiyi’s policy calls for an increase in rental supplements already available to seniors, such as the provincial Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters, or SAFER, program, by tying them to inflation or the consumer price index; building more senior-specific subsidized housing; exploring alternative models like co-housing; and working with community organizations to ensure seniors have access to services.
“Secure and affordable housing is crucial to the well-being and the dignity of our seniors,” she said, adding that a lack of stable housing contributes to seniors’ health complications, homelessness rates and isolation.
In an interview before her presentation, Egbebiyi told The Tyee that low-income seniors are often ignored by society.
“There is a need for government to protect these groups of people,” she said.
As part of the 2024 budget, the current NDP government announced a one-time $430 payment to SAFER recipients, as well as a $110 average increase in monthly payments.
Several months later, however, BC Housing released a report showing SAFER rates no longer keep up with rental costs.
In its election platform, the NDP pledges to build more housing affordable for seniors. They echo the Greens by pledging to increase SAFER eligibility and the level of support for individual renters. They would also increase the monthly Senior’s Supplement by $50 to $149.
Read more: Youth Reimagine Solutions for Housing, Water and More
The BC NDP has pledged to build another 300,000 homes over the next decade, though these units are not specifically for seniors or low-income people.
The BC Greens promise to increase SAFER rates, as well as the income eligibility threshold to qualify for the program. They have also pledged to apply vacancy controls to housing rates for assisted-living homes.
The Greens also promise rebates for landlords who modify their units for people with disabilities, including seniors; funding assistive emergency devices like visual fire alarms for people with mobility or hearing disabilities; and requiring all residential buildings to have emergency evacuation plans that include accommodations for people with mobility disabilities.
The BC Conservatives have not made pledges specific to seniors housing.
“The free market does play a big role in housing; however, the free market is more concerned with profit instead of affordable housing,” Egbebiyi said.
“It’s very unlikely to adequately address some of the affordable housing needs for seniors.”
Katie Hyslop The Tyee
Katie Hyslop reports for The Tyee.
