By Robin Thorneycroft
The federal, provincial and city governments combined to hand out $8.2 million to “prevent and end homelessness” in Ottawa, but according to groups who received money they are only trying to manage the symptoms instead of investing in a cure. They say the real problem is the lack of affordable housing.
The lack of social or subsidized housing is not new to the Ottawa area. There are about 24,000 units in the city, however the waiting list for subsidized housing has more than 15,000 names, according to the City of Ottawa Web site. Those on the list can expect a five-to-seven-year wait.
The money, given out was divided among 44 groups dealing with support services, transitional and affordable housing and support to obtain and retain housing.
“New housing is the thing that is needed more than anything else right now. Support services are great but if there is nowhere for people to live to receive those services then you are compounding the problem,” says Catherine Boucher, executive co-ordinator of the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, a nonprofit housing organization.
“Realistically what we need is not more money for shelter beds and more mittens and coats. What we need is more funding for housing and that is going to take a lot more money than a city can come up with.
“We were pretty lucky this time. It’s a step in the right direction, but we are getting a lot less than we used to get.”
She says this money doesn’t cover the entire costs of the three projects which received funding. The projects include building 13 townhouses for families at risk of homelessness and 10 supportive units for persons with AIDS. Boucher says, the $600,000 will merely help, along with donations, to lower the capital expenses.
In the past, the government gave interest-free, 30-year loans accompanied by subsidies, which Boucher says would provide more homes for people than a one-time grant.
Clara Freire, manager of Centre 507, agrees much of the problem comes from a lack of affordable housing.
“There is a lot of frustration around the fact that people cannot find an affordable place to live. We have never been at a point when we could not offer any help to those looking for somewhere to live. We have no leads on housing. We have nowhere to suggest.”
Centre 507, a drop-in centre which offers pastoral counselling and access to toiletries and snacks, received funds to help create an employment strategy program to teach life skills to find and keep employment. They asked for funding for three years but only received enough for one.
Governments don’t understand the need for social housing, says Carleton University social work professor Allan Moscovitch.
“Social housing has to be understood to be as essential as the Children’s Aid Society or mental health counselling,” he says. “There are going to be people who simply cannot afford to rent housing on the open market and at the moment that housing isn’t forth coming anyway.”
Groups had to create projects to deal with issues laid out in Ottawa’s Community Action Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness to receive the new grants.
Two-thirds of the projects are service oriented, dealing with everything from life skills to mental-health support, rather than new initiatives to build affordable housing. Some projects will receive funding until 2003, bringing a total of more than $17 million into Ottawa to address homelessness.
For solutions to work everyone needs to agree on a definition of a problem. For instance, today the city designates social housing is for someone who spends more than 50 per cent of their income on housing.
“We used to think of it as 30 per cent not 50 per cent,” says Moscovitch. “If you re-define poverty you can define it out of existence.”