odsp, however, needs something more than money thrown at it. it is suffering from a design flaw brought in during the harris years to shift to something market-based. this was rooted in the silly conservative idea that people are more free when they have more financial choices (because that's what i want in my life, the freedom to make financial decisions. right. in fact, that's about the last thing i give a fuck about.) and less free when they have less financial choices. ergo, disabled people would be more free if better allowed to participate in the market. essentially zero disabled people agree with that logic; disabled people generally want freedom from markets and look to odsp as an escape mechanism from the tyranny of the market, which they can't compete in.
it's the same issue with religion. conservatives want freedom of religion. secularists want from from religion.
today, they give us 55% of the minimum wage and tell us to compete with minimum wage earners for market housing. a one bedroom apartment in the cheapest city in ontario is roughly the same amount as my entire odsp check, $1300-$1400/month. how can i compete on the market when i'm not given the resources to? but, it's the premise - that disabled people can compete on the market - that is actually the problem, because it's backwards and orwellian and stupid. the definition of being disabled is that you can't compete on the market.
the inevitable outcome of telling disabled people to look for market housing and then giving them 55% of the minimum wage is that disabled people are going to end up homeless. the math is pretty oppressive. it doesn't work out any other way. worse, the disabled are the people in society least able to pull themselves out of poverty, or generate money from nothing. then the conservatives moan and complain and whine that they're throwing away all this money on the disabled, when this is actually not what we want and not what we need.
odsp needs to be redesigned to fix this design flaw brought in during the harris years by stop telling disabled people to pay market rent and then handicapping them by preventing them from being able to compete on the market by giving them too low a fraction of the minimum wage, so that they cannot compete with minimum wage earners for housing. the two ways to do this are to get odsp recipients out of market housing by increasing subsidized housing (which is the better idea) or, if you want to hold to the delusions of market theory, by setting the amount that odsp recipients receive to an amount that allows them to compete on the market. they would need to at least double the shelter amount from $600 to $1200, keeping in mind that, as a disabled person, i actually don't need income for things like gas money, because i can't afford (and in my case don't want) a car.