What does living in poverty look like in the GTA today?

Ask a panel of leaders from United Way anchor agencies around the GTA who deal with poverty on the front lines every day, as the Star recently did, and they don’t lack for descriptions.

“It looks like a client who comes into a program who has walked four miles because they don’t have TTC fare,” says Axelle Janczur, the executive director of Access Alliance on College St. near Kensington Market. “It’s precarious employment . . . parents who have three or four or five jobs between them, and who are not home for their children.”

“It looks like being kicked out of the home you’re renting. Not being able to qualify for a mortgage,” says Ginelle Skerritt, executive director of Warden Woods Community Centre in Scarborough. “Poverty, what it looks like at Warden Woods, is racialized. And we notice that the face of poverty is getting younger, with children and youth having the highest rates.”

It is more spread out across the region than ever before, says Shari Lynn Ladanchuk, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peel. “Our poverty rates are higher than the provincial and national average, although people still think there is no poverty in Peel region,” she says.

“I talked to a client yesterday and I asked her what poverty meant to her, and she said poverty is exhausting,” says Elisha Laker, executive director of Family Services York Region. “She came from a family where there were mental health problems . . . she got into an arranged marriage at age 17, she had three kids. That marriage was a disaster with violence. She ended up staying in a motel with her kids because she had an older son so she couldn’t get into a shelter.” That woman is now a school teacher, Laker says. “But talk about the barriers and dilemmas she went through to get to the point she is today, they’re huge.”

Huge. It’s a word that describes the scope of the situation in Canada’s biggest city, which is growing and changing at a world-beating rate, but remains Canada’s income inequality capital, with housing and rental prices reaching crisis levels of unaffordability, where the job market is increasingly a minefield of precarious part-time and temporary jobs.

As the largest non-government supporter of social services in the region, the United Way has long confronted the task of trying to understand the huge problem of poverty — and finding new and better ways to deal with it.

Daniele Zanotti, president and CEO of United Way Toronto and York Region, says the agency’s long record of influential research reports has reshaped its approach in recent years, focusing its work in particular neighbourhoods and opening hubs for service delivery, and sharpening its approach to helping youth.

“But then last year we transformed how and who we fund,” Zanotti says, by developing “anchor partner” relationships with a list of multi-service agencies, including those represented at this roundtable discussion. “The anchor partners are really working with us on the front line on the community side, and on policy on poverty issues.”

This includes “the poverty of the belly,” as Zanotti refers to the lack of basic needs such as food, housing and safety, and is also intended to address “poverty of belonging — the cost of not feeling included in a region that is increasingly polarized.”

The anchor agencies say their approach is shaped by what they see. A young man who needed steel-toe boots for a new job led to the creation of a mini-micro loan program offering loans of $200 to $5,000 at Warden Woods. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Peel has changed its volunteer requirements to remove barriers for those with unconventional job schedules. Family Services York Region runs a high school mentorship program to connect students with incoming Grade 9s to create a “positive peer culture.” At Access Alliance, staff provides interpreters for those navigating the medical system.

And at every step, says Janczur, the action comes with advocacy. Not just providing tokens, but negotiating with the TTC about the PRESTO card’s future. Not just providing food, but talking to food banks about eligibility for those without documentation.

“We have to provide individual services, but we also have to address the systemic issues,” she says. “Because we can’t, on an individual basis, fix all the issues. Poverty is a systemic issue, and we have to be addressing the systemic challenges.”

“I think this idea of ‘working with’ people defines the anchor agencies,” Zanotti says. “This ability to understand where people are at and work with them on the journey.” He says that in the past year, 70,000 people in Toronto and York Region have gotten involved through anchor agencies and hubs, working together on big things like Toronto’s anti-poverty strategy and small things like installing stoplights to make pedestrians safer.

“We’ve launched a goal to engage 1 million people by 2025 in fighting local poverty. We’re not going to do it by agencies alone, we’re not going to fundraise our way out of it . . . And that means Jane or Jose citizen not only gives us dollars, but they roll up their sleeves and get involved in their community.”

The others around the table nod and emphasize with that last part — because addressing poverty, they say, is not just about recruiting volunteer labour, it is about building a community for all of its members. It’s what’s needed when income polarization strikes at widespread and isolated neighbourhoods, when so many are detached from extended family and social networks that used to provide a safety net for their members.

“There’s not a simple solution,” Laker says. “We are our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers. It’s really creating some kind of culture of support, or neighbourhoods of support.”

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Skerritt says this approach informs everything about Warden Woods. “We were looking at it, at some point, as very transactional, but somewhere along the line we learned it is an opportunity for our volunteers to belong, as well. It’s a developmental opportunity. It’s about them building a relationship with others in need in their community.”

Skerritt tells of a young man who grew up in the highrise towers near Warden Woods in poverty, who for the past five years has run a financial mentoring group for youth in the area — learning about the stock market and raising money for charity.

“He’s now quite wealthy, but he found his way back to the community,” Skerritt says. “It isn’t just our agency, it isn’t the government, it isn’t the United Way by itself. It’s really us all together can make a contribution. There’s a real exchange of caring. And a real exchange of ideas for our vision for this community.”