Ontario Works Shuffles Little Portugal Clients to Downtown Office

Ontario Works clients whose postal codes begin with M6J received a notice this month that, "in order to serve you better," their accounts would be moved to the downtown Metro Hall office, and that they would get further information in the mail.

As of yet, further notices have not been sent out, and there seem to be various versions of the story. The phone line for the 1900 Dundas West office still says that it serves M6J-ers, the notice at the entrance to the building says something about it being effective on the 20th or something like that, and workers say that the move is because the office took on clients from a postal code further out. They talk about how happy the people at the eastern border of the M6J postal code must be.

Just to illustrate how little this serves anybody better, here's a map of the two M6J areas, and the two offices (the new one is the one that's further away from most of the area):


View M6J area code in a larger map

If you eyeball it, it looks like only residents of 1/5th of the postal code are actually closer to the new location.

So why didn't they just shuffle those in the green area to the new office, instead of continuing to force them to trek west on Dundas, and let the people in Little Portugal stay in Little Portugal where they want to stay?

It's basically a big f-you to Little Portugal residents on OW. It'll be interesting to see the scads of irate Portuguese rubbing shoulders with some of the roughest OW clients in the city, at the most ghetto, difficult-to-find office in the GTA.

If you're going to have to go to this hellhole, here's how to get there: it's just to the left of the main entrance pictured below, off the north side of Wellington street, and it's on the south side of Metro Hall.


View Larger Map

Fortunately, there is a silver lining to all of this: the people at the downtown office have a bit of a better attitude. They don't speak Portuguese, though. And everybody's getting transferred to new workers. How are our Portuguese immigrants who are still learning basic, basic English, supposed to make the transition, when they're already in enough of a pickle, having come to Canada expecting everything to be coming up roses, and ending up on the dole because, oops, Canada's a pretty tough place to live, it turns out.

Another actual plus: The employment center in Metro Hall is much less ghetto than the one on Dundas West.

The problem is the commute. Ontario Works clients don't spend their transportation allowance, if they get it, on transportation, they spend it on bills, because the accommodations and basic needs allowance, added up, are what most people pay for rent - if they're lucky. So this means a lot of walking. A lot.

Maybe now's a good time to set up a much-needed Bikes for Bums project or something.

Internet Famous Homeless People

Going around some of these drop-in programs, I see people who could really do well in movies. And I wonder how many of the people around me are building something incredible on the internet... with social networking, blogging or whatever.

Check this link out: 6 Awesome Homeless People Saved by The Internet

No Scott Mission Lunches on Sunday!

Full apologies... the calendar has misleadingly said Scott Mission lunch every day of the week at 10:30 and 11:30, and it's actually every day except Sundays.

And they don't want you to go to both! Here's a recommendation: go to the 10:30 one and then bomb down to St. Felix on Augusta just north of Queen. Go through the projects south of the market. For bonus points, hit up St. Steven's at Augusta and College before Scott Mission. It's a triple-whammy that you'll need some real Tupperware to make full use of. If you tupperware the shit out of those three, you can chill for the rest of the day.

Again - sorry! This site is about accuracy and this is embarrassing.

Much Love,

The Overconnected Hungry

Our Lady of Good Counsel @ College & Ossington: Best Toronto Soup Kitchen You Never Heard of

Praise the lord! This unassuming Caribbean Catholic church will make your Wednesday. Every Wednesday.

So they open around 8 or 9am to let people in from the cold and grab some coffee and what have you, and then at 11am, watch out. Watch the fuck out. They will they will feed you. These ladies don't stop until you're unable to leave because you're too full. Today, they started us off with some salad, well-dressed, and then comes the hearty veggie soup, and then they start laying the groceries on us. They gave us fishes - whole fishes. Boxes of cookies. Granola bars. Orange Pekoe in bags. The good kind. And candies. Tons of them. We all came away with grocery bags full of it. My girlfriend is going to think I robbed a grocery store out of desperation.

I was the only anglo there. Everybody else was Portuguese and there were a couple Chinese ladies up in there. The ladies serving us were all Caribbean sweethearts. Only 18 people showed up, and it looks like that's what they were expecting.

And it's 100% evangelism-free.

Here's where 'tis:

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