Editor:
I would like to know who the housing ministers are who think seniors don’t need the homeowner’s tax grant. I’d like those people to come and walk a mile in my shoes if they think I don’t need that money.
The value of a home is only realized when it is sold; if the senior continues to live in it, it's just a money pit, and some of us seniors still have mortgages to pay.
The tax grant is one of the very few benefits I get from the government, because I have to pay full price for nearly everything else in my life. My income is just enough that I don’t qualify for the “low-income perks," nor do I want to. I am very proud of the fact that I have always been able to take care of myself. It’s a struggle and getting harder all the time, but I still manage to do it.
What those ministers need to realize is that, as seniors, we have already paid for everything. We paid for the sidewalks they walk on, the roads they drive on, the schools their children go to, the recreational facilities they enjoy, the hospitals, and all the infrastructure that graces their world. We paid for all of it, their wonderful lifestyle, and now they want to take what little we have to solve the housing crisis, the homeless crisis, the drug crisis, the climate crisis and all the other ills of society that they have allowed to proliferate. Their lack of commitment, their dogged denial of the issues and what really needs to be done to solve them has gotten us into this situation, and now they want the seniors to solve it for them.
Seniors are not the bottomless pit the government relies on to keep their heads above water. I don’t know where that pit is, but it’s not us!
It used to be, if you managed to rise to the level of the middle class, that was your step up, that was the golden road, but the middle class of today are the slave labourers of society. They don’t qualify for any perks, and they pay full price for everything. That’s hard enough if you are actually earning money and have the ability to earn more, but when you’re on a fixed income, a pension, you’re screwed.
At 73 and disabled, am I expected to get a job so I can pay for these increases? I can’t do that, because if I earn one extra dime, the government will dock my pension, so I won’t be any better off. Pensioners can’t even help themselves, if we try. We continue to be enslaved by the system that has sucked us dry for generations.
When inflation happens, when the prices go up for food, and fuel, and taxes, and services, etc., seniors still have to pay those increases. We’re not exempt from them, and our fixed incomes are stretched more and more very day.
I don’t know who these rich seniors are that the government thinks don’t need their homeowner’s grant. Those aren’t the seniors in my life. The seniors I know live one day at a time, getting by, on their monthly pensions. They are the people who worked hard their whole lives and managed to qualify for a pension; thousands of their contemporaries didn’t. Leave our money and our benefits alone!
Betty R.L. Gray, New Westminster
