Ottawa is still not on target to end homelessness in the next 10 years, says The Alliance to End Homelessness in its annual report card.
“Despite some progress in creating additional affordable housing units last year, the Ottawa community faced challenges in meeting the 2010 targets we set to end homelessness by 2020,” Marion Wright, chair of the Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a news release.
Last year, the alliance set strong annual targets to end homelessness within the next decade, particularly for the development of new affordable housing units.
“We’re pleased that federal, provincial and municipal funding, along with the efforts of housing, shelter and service providers, resulted in some 334 new affordable units in 2010,” says Wright. “That’s a significant increase and welcome improvement over the 88 produced in 2009, but still well below our target of 1,000 new units per year.”
However, the alliance still decided to give the city a C+ for its effort to create more affordable housing.
Wright said the alliance welcomes new city strategies, which includes $10 million for the Housing and Poverty Initiative to address homelessness and poverty, and $4 million for capital investments in housing in the 2011 budget.
The report card gave its first F grade for housing affordability, which aims at reaching Canada’s standard of ensuring that people on low incomes would be able to spend no more than 30 per cent of their income on housing.