Innovation key to solving homelessness
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/10/2017 (2349 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
OTTAWA — With persistent homelessness downtown, a construction boom in Winnipeg’s suburbs and a birthrate that exceeds the national average, the city will be profoundly affected by a looming national housing strategy, advocates and officials say.
“We’re in a different time, so we’ve got to start thinking differently,” said Jino Distasio, director of urban studies at the University of Winnipeg. “You have to connect the local to the federal to make this work.”
Distasio is among a dozen researchers and activists who told the Free Press Winnipeg is at a crossroads.
They say the city’s approach to housing those with addictions is a model for the rest of across Canada, as is a provincial rent benefit that follows low-income people as they move for work opportunities. But they worry the chronic lack of affordable downtown homes will persist, and provincial belt-tightening might thwart new housing programs.
In March, Ottawa announced $11 billion for affordable housing for the next decade, and pledged to implement a national housing strategy this fall. It would be the first major federal push to fight homelessness in at least three decades. Advocates have heard the government will unveil the policy Nov. 22, National Housing Day.
They’ve also heard Ottawa will unveil part of its strategy Wednesday in Winnipeg during the national conference of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.
Here’s what will be on their minds.
HOUSING FIRST
Lineups are common outside Siloam Mission, the city’s largest shelter. It feeds hundreds daily, and often fills all of its 110 beds. The addition of 50 beds will soon make it less common for staff to turn people away, but the shelter recognizes that’s a stop-gap solution.
“We are focused on social and affordable housing. It’s right at the top of our priorities,” said CEO Jim Bell.
Bell says charities such as Siloam, city officials and researchers largely know how to get hundreds of people off downtown streets and into homes.
A decade ago, Winnipeg was among one of Canada’s first cities to take on the Housing First model, which aims to end the revolving door of homelessness by getting people off the streets regardless of their sobriety.
It involves providing stability through housing before using small teams to tackle addictions, unemployment and education gaps.
“The prior model was (that) somebody should earn the right to be re-housed, and they need to prove that by peeing in a bottle on a weekly basis or following some regimen,” said Distasio, who was the principal investigator for Winnipeg during a groundbreaking 2008 study.
The project, called At Home, tracked 2,148 homeless people who have mental-health issues, half of whom were enrolled in Housing First programs.
It spanned five years and five cities, with Winnipeg’s version focusing on homeless Indigenous people (who represent roughly 70 per cent of Siloam’s guests).
The local study found Housing First cost $18,840 per high-need person per year, but saved an extra $17,527 by avoiding hospitals, jails and shelters. It also saved about a quarter of social spending on lower-need people, who have less severe mental health issues.
The model has been replicated in more than 60 Canadian communities.
“There has been a lot of homework done,” Bell says. “Now, it’s time to act.”
He says an injection of federal cash, combined with local oversight, could provide more stable options. Bell says there are empty buildings in neighbourhoods such as West Broadway that could easily be changed into mixed-income housing.
Distasio says that unlike most Canadian cities, Winnipeg’s poor rely on rooming houses and single-person hotel rooms for housing, with limited permanent options.
The Social Planning Council of Winnipeg estimates that 3,000 Manitoba households are unaffordable, overcrowded or in poor repair, and there are no reasonably priced alternatives.
Josh Brandon, a community animator with the group, says most of them are in Winnipeg, especially among immigrant and Indigenous families whose birthrates exceed the general population.
When Syrian refugees arrived in Winnipeg last year, sponsor groups struggled to find apartments for their larger families. But it’s been a persistent problem for Indigenous families, Brandon said, as relatives come from northern communities to seek employment, education or medical help.
NDP MP Daniel Blaikie says Winnipeggers need a downtown option “that isn’t just a private slum rooming house but is actual, decent housing, where people can live with dignity.”
Most of Winnipeg’s housing growth involves homes and condominiums in the suburbs.
A recent city report on redrawing ward boundaries suggests that Winnipeg’s most intense growth is expected in areas such as Sage Creek, Transcona and West Kildonan.
Dave Dessens, the city’s housing policy co-ordinator, says Winnipeg is about to see numerous housing options open up downtown, as a string of projects approach the long approval and construction phases.
“We’ve got over a thousand units that are coming on-stream, both rental and home-ownership, just in downtown. I think it will have an impact.”
A MANITOBA MODEL
Unlike most provinces, the Manitoba government targets housing subsidies for both buildings and people. It’s a balance Ottawa is under pressure to get right.
Manitoba’s portable housing benefit program subsidizes low-income people’s rent (up to 75 per cent) even when they move to another building.
Known as Rent Assist, the program doesn’t tie Manitobans to a specific social-housing building, but instead lets them relocate for family or work reasons.
Ottawa is studying that model, which Ontario is emulating in a pilot project targeted at women who are fleeing domestic abuse.
Ontario MP Karen Vecchio, the Conservative housing critic, says portable benefits could help rural communities, and those who move for jobs.
But she says Ottawa has to find a solution for hundreds of government-owned rental units and co-operatives, most of which were built decades ago through mortgages that were tied to federal funding agreements.
Almost all of these buildings will have their mortgages expire in the next two decades, putting an end to billions in government support for an estimated 24,000 units, according to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada.
“If that gap isn’t addressed somehow, there are pretty serious implications for low-income Manitobans,” says the group’s national planning expert Douglas Wong. “You’d have people in their 60’s looking for roommates.”
While the subsidies have helped co-operatives save millions, Wong said co-ops need that money to retrofit aging buildings.
Vecchio says that whatever funding Ottawa puts forward — for individuals and for buildings — it can’t be too narrowly targeted. She says earmarking funds for youth or disabled people can help vulnerable groups, but unintentionally exclude people who don’t fit a defined criteria.
Charles Huband, a longtime executive with the Westminster Housing Society, frequently finds money is available for programs serving Indigenous people or seniors, but not others.
“I would prefer something that was broader than that, and simply targeted to poorer people.”
Vecchio says the funding has to include those going through a rough patch.
“For many Canadians, it’s supposed to be a temporary thing. So what is it that we can do to help people get on their feet?” she said.
“I’m really looking for the hands-up approach, and not the handout approach.”
EVERYONE AT THE TABLE
Most advocates say Winnipeg’s greatest housing challenge will be getting all three levels of government on the same page, something last done five years ago in a single downtown office.
The Winnipeg Housing and Homelessness Initiative was effectively three bureaucrats sitting inside the Art Deco office building at 361 Hargrave St.
Ottawa, the province and the city agreed in 2000 to put one of their staff in the office, through a short-term contract that was expanded multiple times.
“It was extremely well-received. I thought it was quite helpful,” Dessens said.
Instead of wrangling a multi-level meeting for every funding application, the bureaucrats could walk down the hall, have a quick chat and report back to their superiors.
The program fizzled out in early 2012 when the province consolidated its offices into the Canada Building, around the corner.
But charities told the Free Press the program focused too much on the highest-need people, such as those sleeping under the Maryland Bridge, instead of people whose housing was becoming inadequate due to rising rents or growing families.
Now, programming iin the city s largely split between Ottawa and the province.
The federal homelessness partnering strategy provided a five-year $35 million fund for Winnipeg, which clocks out in 2019. It’s used for mostly temporary housing. The province runs its own programs mostly separately from the federal government, largely aimed at long-term housing.
The three levels of government could soon be in sync again.
The Liberal government’s infrastructure programs have put up cash for bridges and busways through funding agreements that pull from a city, province and Ottawa — but Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government has been slow to embrace that model.
So-called tripartite projects were popular decades ago. For example, that model was used to convert a derelict train yard at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers into The Forks, and north Portage Avenue into the Portage Place shopping mall.
But Ottawa’s having trouble getting its massive infrastructure spending into Manitoba.
The City of Winnipeg has withdrawn funding for eight projects, including the pedestrian-bike bridge over Pembina Highway, because the Pallister government wouldn’t provide its financial contribution.
The feds have hinted at using the same tripartite model to fund housing projects, and advocates fear provincial reluctance will leave Winnipeg shortchanged.
The Pallister government has vowed to balance the province’s books, and its KPMG cost-cutting report suggests privatizing Manitoba Housing, the Crown corporation that overesees housing programs. The province says it’s still studying that report, and waiting on the federal strategy to release its own plans.
“We really need to have the one-two punch. But we’re kind of playing chicken,” Distasio said.
Blaikie said Ottawa will have to build trust with the Pallister government — and offer enough cash.
“It has to be a substantial investment of housing every year, in order to begin even making a dent in the deficit of affordable housing,” said Blaikie.
“This is a really important one for them not to mess up, and I hope they get it right.”
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca