When Dianne Miller thinks back to the darkest days of her life eight years ago, she remembers the cold.
"It was a bitter winter," she said flatly.
Leaving the hospital after becoming seriously ill, Miller, her husband and their five-year-old son Alex returned home to find their rental trailer uninhabitable – frozen solid with burst pipes. Her family had nowhere to go.
They had spent the last of their money on bills. They had no food, and for the first time since she was 14, a proudly self-reliant Miller could no longer work.
"There was absolutely nothing I could do," Miller said.
It wasn't until an acquaintance passed along a number for the St. Vincent de Paul that the seemingly
helpless situation began to brighten. With the guidance of volunteers, Miller moved into Yellowknife
Housing, where she has lived ever since, raising her son as a single parent.
"We just make it work," Miller said. "People are good and we live simply."
Brendan Burke/NNSL photo.
Nearly a decade later, that cold winter has long passed for Miller, but many others – families and children stricken by poverty – are still living it.
"We really see it here. It's right in our faces," said Miller. From her son bringing hungry neighbourhood kids home for food, to young children knocking on her door because they don't know where their parents are, Miller says she knows firsthand how prevalent the issue of child and family poverty is in Yellowknife.
"It's a huge problem," she said. The issue, described by Miller as complex with no "magic" solution, is underscored in the recent release of an annual child and family poverty report from Campaign 2000, a nationwide anti-poverty coalition. The report names the NWT as having the fourth highest child poverty rate in Canada. At a rate of 22.1 per cent, the latest numbers show an improvement from the 23.6 per cent rate recorded last year, but 2017's figure still sits well above the national rate, which is 17. 4 per cent.
For the city's family outreach organizations, like those that saved Miller from the streets and helped her regain independence, statistically noted progressions – or regressions – don't always reflect what
workers experience on a day to day, front-line basis.
Lyda Fuller, executive director of Yellowknife YWCA – an organization that, like St. Vincent de Paul, works to combat poverty through community-based initiatives – told Yellowknifer she's surprised the territory didn't rank higher on the list.
"We're providing more and more food to families every day. Thank goodness for Food Rescue, but families need a reliable source of funds to obtain food security," Fuller said, adding she sees the city's "rampant" child poverty problem daily in the YWCA's housing programs.
Families still struggling
On the other hand, The Salvation Army's Basil Korie, a family services caseworker, says the progress illustrated in the report, albeit small, reflects the positives he's seen in recent years through his front-line work.
But Korie said when one family is moving forward, out of poverty, another family is still struggling to make ends meet. A struggle, he said, that's fuelled by a lack of affordable housing in Yellowknife.
"When you ask families how much rent they pay – the answer is alarming," Korie said.
Echoing Korie's acknowledgment of high rental costs as a driver of child and family poverty, the Salvation
Army's ministry unit leader, Byron Hardy, pointed to unregulated, sky-high costs of "basic human needs," like utilities, as a catalyst.
"There's no rent control, no control on food prices. No control on any of these staples," Hardy said,
adding that expenses can quickly snowball to $4,000 a month for low income families. Contrasting unfettered housing rates with capped limits for how much recipients of income assistance can access, Hardy said, "there's a disparity between your maximum income support, but yet there's no rental controls."
While climbing rental and cost of living rates were not the the focus of recent anti-poverty round table talks, Minister of Health and Social Services Glen Abernethy told Yellowknifer the sit-downs explored other factors that are "driving high costs and impacting our people."