‘As bad as it gets’: Sick and disabled woman from Halifax says she can barely survive on benefits

A can of pop.

That’s all Tammy Martin put in her stomach by late Friday afternoon. She had no food in her north Dartmouth apartment and no money in her pocket.

She walked along Quinpool Road with a cane, on her way to her husband, Neville. He was begging most of the day.

Both she and her husband are disabled. Martin, 49, has spina bifida and hydrocephalus – a buildup of fluid in the brain. She also only has one kidney, and it’s only half working, she said.

They simply don’t have enough money to survive, she says. They have welfare benefits.

Much of that goes directly to their landlords to cover the rent. After that, they are only left with $500 a month to make ends meet.

“We’re going without food, without medicine,” said Martin. “It’s been quite a battle.”

“The biggest problem is that we don’t have enough money to live on.”

For two years in a row, the Nova Scotia Tory government resisted calls to raise income assistance rates in Nova Scotia. Disabled adults in this county get just $11,559, the second lowest rate in the country.

Martin says her husband has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He’s had multiple heart attacks and strokes, she says. Both want to work, but can’t.

Her husband acts so they can survive, she says. He makes the trip to Halifax, where there are more people and more money. It usually ends up at the busy intersection of Robie Street and Quinpool Road.

Nobody wants to beg for money, said Martin, who sometimes fools himself. They are used to enduring the occasional insult.

“People will say to us ‘why don’t you get a job’, but we can’t.”

Vince Calderhead, a human rights attorney and anti-poverty campaigner, has been urging the county to increase income support for years. Calderhead was stunned after the Conservatives released their second consecutive budget last April with no welfare increase.

“It’s as bad as it gets,” Halifax’s attorney said.

“Prime Minister (Tim) Houston and his cabinet have chosen to make the poor poorer. They have chosen to give them a reduction in their standard of living.”

He also said the county’s “shameful” social assistance rates are an indictment not only of politicians, but of the people who elect them.

The treatment of people in poverty is for us as Nova Scotians, he said. The attorney says people can do their part by contacting their MLAs and letting them know that the county’s social services are unacceptable and they need to be increased.

Martin has a simple suggestion, one for the Prime Minister.

“I wish he would step into our shoes for a day and see what we’re up against, to realize how hard of a battle it is.”