BC ACORN started organizing in 2005, starting with our first chapter, Surrey. Since then we have built up six more chapters across the lower mainland (New Westminster, Burnaby, Tri-Cities, Whalley, Guilford, and Newton). Some of our biggest victories include: Canada’s first living wage policy in New Westminster; the introduction of a healthy homes bylaw in Surrey; regulation of payday lending; and many local victories against slumlords!
Despite losing our office in an explosion in 2013, BC ACORN is stronger than ever and continuing the fight for healthy homes, disability rights, and closing the digital divide!
Want to be part of the fight? Join ACORN!
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New Canadians and temporary foreign workers are mad about the outrageous costs of sending money back home to loved ones in need – but the famine in Somalia, and devastating drought in neighbouring Kenya, has one person especially upset.
Rental housing in New Westminster is being knocked down without anything to replace it, so the city has come up with some ways it hopes will reverse the trend.
A coalition of B.C. advocacy groups is aiming to make social housing a provincial election issue.
At a news conference today (February 4), a group calling itself the Social Housing Coalition B.C. launched a call for 10,000 units of social housing a year to address what it says is a crisis in the province.
The local chapter of ACORN Canada organized a Stand for Housing rally in Uptown New Westminster on Jan. 12 to highlight the need for housing.
Date: January 12, 2013
To: The Honourable Dr. Moira Stilwell MD, MLA, B.C. Minister of Social Development;
Re: Provincial Disability Benefits
It's ironic that Sue Collard now lives in Langley, in the riding of local MLA and housing minister Rich Coleman, the activist says.
Collard was in front of Coleman's constituency office at the Langley Events Centre on Friday along with other members of ACORN Canada to rally for better tenant protection.
Collard became a high-profile face in the fight for tenants rights starting in 2010 after the former Kwantlen Park Manor resident petitioned the residential tenancy branch about disrepair in her home.
Landlord Gurdyal Singh Sahota was slapped with a $115,000 fine for failing to maintain the water damaged apartment building in Surrey earlier this year.
The fine was waived in October, providing Sahota completes all repairs and helped resettle his tenants.
"My building is still in disrepair," Collard said on Friday.
Along with a group of other tenants and activists, she visited Coleman's office to deliver a letter and ask for changes.
They asked for government action against bad landlords, unhealthy conditions in apartments, and for action to preserve the province's rental housing stock.
ACORN members in BC are fighting to end poverty with allies in the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition. To learn more about some of the people living in poverty in BC, visit BC's Hardest Working.
BC ACORN members in action on October 24th, 2012. The Disability Rights Group will continue to take action, every month, until their demands are met.
For more information, or to join them in their important work, contact the BC ACORN office.
Royal City resident Tom Page has firsthand knowledge about the financial struggles felt by people with disabilities.
Page, who collects a disability benefits of $906 a month, said some people on disability get just over $700 a month.
"I have fibromyalgia and severe osteoarthritis. I have also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, although I am stabilized. I am 75 per cent deaf in both ears. I have a knee that has been operated on three times. It is difficult to walk because all the cartilage is gone, and it is now a bone-on-bone situation," he said. "I was told by an orthopedic surgeon I would be in a wheelchair when I was 55. I am 59 and still walking. I consider myself ahead of the game."
Page has been on a disability pension for five years, having tried to work different jobs and to return to work various times through the years.
"I worked all my life prior to that," he said of his deteriorating health. "My main career, I was a computer systems analyst. I went into business. I had an Internet business. I had a consulting business."
Because of his health issues, Page is unable to do any work that is physical or stressful.
"I am struggling," he said. "I'd like to go back to work if I could find something suitable."
Before his health deteriorated, Page could run five miles a day, work out at the gym and participate in sports like swimming and squash.
"It's difficult for a person who has lived a comfortable middle-class life to not only be disabled, but impoverished," he said. "That's the situation."
Getting by each month is challenging for people on disability pensions, Page said.
"It's extremely difficult, even with the food bank," he said. "It is difficult to eat a healthy diet. The food bank usage has increased. The amount you can get has decreased."
Page recently joined about 35 members of ACORN in a protest outside the Ministry of Social Development office in New Westminster. The New Westminster-based chapter of ACORN Canada tackles issues such as the need for safe and healthy rental housing and the need for increases to disability benefit rates.
35 members of BC ACORN's Disabilty Rights Group took action last week. They rallied at an office of the Ministry of Social Development and delivered a letter to minister Moira Stillwell, which is copied below.
The Disabilty Rights Group will continue to take action until the system that over 100,000 disabled British Colombians depend on is fixed.
They were joined by John Bail, National Director of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Pacific Region, who brought a message of solidarity.