Question: Have been unemployed for more than a year. Now on Assistance. What is the best action to take? Am close to losing my home,within a month of two. No other funds available.
Answer: Unfortunately your situation is becoming more common as the recession continues. Our best advice is to determine your priorities, and act accordingly.
If you are likely to lose your home, your first priority is to find a place to live. That may mean renting a place, or moving in with a friend or relative. Either way, that’s something you want to arrange now, while you have a month or two; you don’t want to leave that to the last minute.
Your next highest priority will be to live, and pay for food and other living expenses. Your goal will be to find a place to live that allows you to survive on assistance and cover your rent and living costs.
Your next priority is to find a job, but obviously you are hard at work on that already. Given how hard it is to find a job, your goal will be to get whatever job you can to meet your living expenses. It’s easier to find a job when you already have a job, so it probably makes sense to take any job that pays more than you are getting on Assistance, and then hope that job leads to something better.
Finally, your last priority will be to deal with your debts. You want to pay your debts, but at the moment you don’t have the income to service your debts, and your creditors can’t garnishee your wages until you are working again. So, until you are working, servicing your debts is not a priority.
A final word of advice: we strongly recommend that you bank at a bank where you don’t owe any money. If you owe money to Bank ABC, and your Assistance cheque is deposited into Bank ABC, it’s very easy for the bank to take the money and apply it against your debt. Therefore you should open a new bank account at a new bank, and only use it to pay your normal monthly living expenses (rent, food, etc.).
Once you are working again you can contact a credit counsellor or an Ontario bankruptcy trustee to make a plan to deal with your debts.