Building up communities called important to fighting poverty

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This article was published 17/02/2009 (6318 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The head of New Life Ministries in Winnipeg’s West End says fighting poverty is about building up communities and the people trying to get ahead while making sure there are consequences for the criminal behaviour that often gets in the way.

At a breakfast meeting hosted by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy this morning, Rev. Larry Gregan said his neighbourhood has a large “vulnerable population”.

It’s been a guinea pig for social experiments by groups with differing beliefs about the poor – ranging from those who espouse “you’re not responsible for anything” to those who tell people living in poverty “you’re on your own,” said Gregan.

Those generalizations aren’t helping the situation, said the minister, who is in charge of New Life Ministries, which was founded by the late Rev. Harry Lehotsky. Like Lehotsky, Gregan is raising his family in the West End. All kinds of people in all kinds of situations have a range of strengths and needs there, and one standard approach hasn’t been the answer, said Gregan.

“We need to be more nuanced: ‘what do they need?’.”

New Life’s Lazarus Housing ministry has renovated and sold 26 houses to low and middle-income families and refurbished 100 emergency and transitional rental units.

One family at a time, they are reclaiming chunks of the West End that had been boarded up and lost because of crime, drug abuse and neglect.

Law enforcement has played a huge role, said Gregan, who serves on the Winnipeg police advisory board and the National Council of Welfare.

He said Manitoba’s Safer Communities Act – a law that forces landlords to evict  tenants dealing in drugs and sex – is working at removing the bad behaviour that ruins neighbourhoods.

The criminal activity spills over and neighbours are often the victims – and often don’t have insurance or credit to tide them over if they’ve been robbed or beaten up and can’t go to work or school, said Gregan. Financially, they’re hit harder than middle-class victims of crime, he said, and can get set back further.

The minister with two young children said he’s asked if he’s not worried about raising his family in the West End with drugs and crime.

His answer?

“It is difficult to have people from the suburbs come to buy sex and drugs.” The drug dealers and prostitutes are there because people with money from affluent areas are demanding their services, said Gregan.

“It is not just an inner-city problem,” he said.

Addressing poverty requires “buy-in” from a broad spectrum of society, said the minister. He pointed to Hamilton, Ont. as a place that’s making a difference by taking another tack in attacking childhood poverty.

It’s vowed to make Hamilton the best place to raise a child, and agencies, organizations and people throughout the city have embraced the goal.

“It’s the only municipality in Ontario where the poverty rate actually went down,” said Gregan.

With tough economic times, more people are going to be needing help and hopefully the experience will make them more compassionate, said Gregan.  

“Compassion always happens in close proximity.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca