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Letter from the Director |
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With Family Day quickly approaching, thoughts of family poverty in
Calgary and across the country are on my mind.
We know that children who live in poverty tend to do poorly in school and experience poor health. We know that families living in poverty face increased stress. We can do better... |
| Note from our Affordable Housing Chair |
We were recently delighted to see that after a year of hard work, the Calgary Committee to End Homelessness has released their 10-Year Plan... |
In the News |
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Low-Income Families in Calgary |
According to the 2006 City of Calgary’s Count of Homeless Persons:
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Low-Income Families in Calgary
The number of families that are living in poverty in Calgary is concerning:
- Nearly two out of 10 Calgary families lived in poverty in 2004
- There were 72,000 poor Calgarian families in 2004. This represents 17.5% of all Calgarian families (Statistics Canada, Income Trends 2004)
- Lone-parent families were almost 10 times as likely to be poor than two-parent families
- 47.1% of lone-parent families were poor versus 5.1% of two-parent families (Statistics Canada, Income Trends 2004)
- Female-headed households are more likely to be poor; 27.5% of female-headed families as opposed to 12.6% of male-headed families were poor (Statistics Canada, Income Trends 2004)
- Families headed by younger earners were four times more likely to live in poverty than those headed by 25 to 44 year olds. There were 24,000 such families in 2004 (Statistics Canada, Income Trends 2004)
- In 2005, 41% of all low-income Canadian children lived in families where at least one income earner had a full-time job, but the family still lived in poverty (2007 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada, Campaign 2000)
According to the 2006 City of Calgary’s Count of Homeless Persons:
- The number of families experiencing homelessness increased by 39% from the 2004 count
- There are 145 homeless families, 120 (82%) of whom were counted in shelters. This is a decrease from the 95% of homeless families counted in shelters in 2004
- The percentage of families living on the street increased from 4.8% (5 families) in 2004 to 15.9% (23 families) in 2006