At a time when Canadians are living in unprecedented wealth, freedom and safety, it is a national disgrace that more than 235,000 people suffer homelessness and countless others face precarious housing situations.
The obvious solution — provide more housing — is easy to identify; implementing that solution is more difficult. Nevertheless, that is the path to take, and the federal government needs to take a more robust role.
The State of Homelessness in Canada 2014, the annual report from the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, links the rise of homelessness to the decline in federal government support.
“Since homelessness emerged as a significant problem — in fact, as a crisis — in the 1990s, with the withdrawal of the federal government’s investment in affordable housing, communities have struggled to respond,” says the report, written by Stephen Gaetz, Tanya Gulliver and Tim Richter.
Canada’s population has increased by 30 per cent over the past 25 years, says the report, while the federal government’s investment in housing has been nearly halved. Ottawa’s spending on low-income housing has dropped from $115 per capita to $60.
Homelessness costs us all — the report’s authors estimate it takes $7 billion a year to manage homelessness, taking into account temporary shelters, police involvement and hospital services. Municipal and regional governments bear the brunt of those costs.
The federal government set the precedent for social housing when it established the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (later the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) in 1946. Its purpose was to house returning veterans and to administer national housing programs. It helped provide housing for many Canadians who could not otherwise afford it.
But as housing costs have gone up, the federal government’s participation in housing has gone down.
“To withdraw federal funding for social housing despite ongoing need is an abrogation of responsibility and a form of downloading by stealth to the province and municipalities,” says a recent report by the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre.
We should do more than manage homelessness with shelters and temporary measures.
“It’s cheaper to fix homelessness than it is to ignore it,” says Richter. He and his fellow researchers say that less than $46 a year per Canadian would end chronic homelessness.
An increasing number of jurisdictions are adopting the Housing First approach, which advocates getting people into homes so their problems — mental illness, poor health, addictions, unemployment — can be more easily addressed.
Through this approach, Alberta’s seven major urban centres have housed more than 9,000 people in a range of programs. Edmonton cut homelessness by more than 30 per cent, Lethbridge cut homelessness by nearly 60 per cent and Medicine Hat is on the verge of becoming the first city in Canada to end homelessness.
Providing permanent homes makes it easier to treat physical and mental illnesses and addictions. A home is a foundation on which to build a better life. An unemployed person with a home has a better chance of finding and keeping a job — a person who once drew on society’s resources becomes a contributor.
Homelessness is, first of all, a local issue, but the solutions go beyond the scope of local governments. The authors of the report on homelessness advocate, among other things, a federal-provincial framework for affordable housing.
Municipalities and provinces are on the front line when it comes to dealing with homelessness, but the federal government, which established social housing as a Canadian tenet, needs to take up its share of the burden again.
This is a rich country. Many of us live far more lavishly than we need to. It won’t hurt us to ensure that everyone has at least basic housing.
