Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 4 - Evidence - Meeting of March 6, 2008
OTTAWA, Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:45 a.m. to examine and report on the impact of the multiple factors and conditions that contribute to the health of Canada's population — known collectively as the social determinants of health, and to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Today, we will be examining cities, homelessness and housing.
[English]
Our committee has two subcommittees: one deals with the issue of population health; the other deals with the major challenges facing our large cities. As poverty, housing and homelessness, which is the theme of this meeting, are issues common to both subcommittees; we have decided to meet as a full committee.
We are also building upon some previous work that has been done at the Senate in the matter of poverty. For example, the 1971 report headed by Senator David Croll, as well as the 1997 report by Senator Cohen, entitled Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada.
At the same time, our study is complementary to the work being done by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, chaired by Senator Fairbairn, who is also here on this committee. That results, because of the request of Senator Hugh Segal, to deal with the matter of rural poverty. We are hoping to pull as much of this together as we can.
Today, as I said, under the general heading of poverty, housing and homelessness, we are focusing on the housing part, but they are all interrelated. We have three eminent panellists, each of whom will speak for about five minutes. Let me introduce them to you. First, in the middle is Mayor of London, Ontario, Anne Marie DeCicco-Best who comes here today as the co-chair on the working group of housing for the Big City Mayors Caucus, a group with which I am familiar, of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In January 2008, the FCM released its fourth theme report in a series on the quality of life in Canadian communities, entitled Trends & Issues in Affordable Housing & Homelessness.
Second, we have from Vancouver — they have less snow than we have here — Don Fairbairn, Consultant, involved in the implementation of the Streetohome Vancouver model, which proposes tax changes to make investment in supportive housing attractive to private sector entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
Last is Mr. Sean Gadon, Director, Affordable Housing Office, City of Toronto. Toronto is also in the process of developing a comprehensive plan to create and maintain affordable housing. In November 2007, the city released a consultation document entitled Housing Opportunities Toronto: An Affordable Housing Framework 2008-2018.
Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, Working Group on Housing, Federation of Canadian Municipalities: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be here on behalf of the Big City Mayors Caucus, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to present to your subcommittee on an issue critical not only to municipalities but also to the entire country.
Thousands of Canadian families are struggling to find an affordable place to live. Chronic systemic homelessness continues in Canada's urban areas. The choices can be stark. Will it be food or rent? Will it be clothes for the kids or mortgage payments? Canadians and their families face choices like this every month. The high cost of housing erodes the potential of families and individuals who want to get ahead but cannot, because they cannot afford a secure and decent place to live.
An FCM report released in mid-January, before the release of our national action plan, confirmed earlier and troubling trends, most notably that finding adequate housing was becoming an issue, even for the so-called middle class, and the tangled roots of homelessness were boring deeper into the foundations of our cities and our communities. These should not just be looked at as social issues; they are core economic issues. They are not just local issues; they are national issues. I am here to say clearly that all levels of government must work together on this critical issue.
All governments are involved in housing to some degree, but in the past decade, particularly the period from 1994 to 1999; the federal government withdrew its funding for affordable housing, which then led to many provincial and territorial governments withdrawing significant resources from housing. Canada's municipalities were left to deal with this problem with only minimal levels of support.
The need for a long-term national program on housing stems from the complexity of the issues that are underlying this problem. The short-term fixes that have characterized much of the housing policy in this country have delivered much needed assistance but have not fixed the problem.
We are deeply concerned about the upcoming expiry of all current federal programs in March 2009, exactly a year from now. If recent trends hold, this would be followed by a radical drop in provincial and territorial investments. One thing is certain: If the funds are not renewed, much will be lost, including the momentum we have built toward solutions and the networks that we have developed in communities across this country.
The Big City Mayors Caucus and FCM have worked together on this long-term strategy. It needs sustainable, long- term funding that we can count on. There is no choice; the federal government must continue to play a strong leadership role in supporting the provision of an affordable housing strategy in Canada. The plan we recently released is ambitious but realistic. It sets lofty but necessary goals. It calls for $3.35 billion to be invested each year amongst all three levels of government, the lion's share by the federal government.
Our priorities are twofold: One, to preserve and enhance existing assets; and, two, to reduce homelessness and the number of people needing housing. We propose three options to achieve these goals. Our recommended option suggests that they can be met almost entirely by reconfiguring the existing spending, but it cannot be done without the federal government at the table.
Over the next 10 years, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' strategy would meet the following targets. First, it would end chronic homelessness. It would create 10,000 new transitional supportive and permanent affordable housing opportunities — that is only 1,000 a year — and appropriate support to stabilize underlying issues that contribute to chronic homelessness. Examples of this would be in the mental health and addiction areas.
Second, we would expand the stock of affordable non-market housing by 15 per cent of the total annual housing starts each year. A growing population creates new households. An estimated 15 per cent of these new households will need housing. This means 25,000 to 30,000 new households each year. This goal aims to create enough new affordable housing to stabilize the housing need.
Third, it would reduce the backlog in core housing need by 25 per cent over 10 years. This will use a variety of approaches, including rental assistance and assisted homeownership, as well as new construction or acquisition and preservation, to expand the number of affordable non-market units.
Our fourth goal is to preserve and modernize Canada's existing social housing stock at the rate of 20,000 units a year and renew existing subsidies. One third of existing social housing stocks, about 200,000 units, are at risk. Achieving this goal will ensure that they are retained and modernized and that expiring subsidies are renewed to ensure that the units remain affordable.
Our fifth goal is to extend the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, or RRAP, to rehabilitate 10,000 homes annually. This would continue to assist low income owners and people with disabilities to rehabilitate existing homes and to help private landlords, including rooming houses, to bring rental properties up to minimum standards while preserving affordable rents.
These goals are ambitious, but our study shows that they can be met if we commit to making housing a priority, not just one year at a time but at the good permanent solution we are looking at. What has been missing in Canada is not so much the investment in housing but the long-term commitment to actually take ownership of the issues and the solution.
I cannot stress enough that chronic homelessness and a lack of affordable housing are not just social issues, they are economic issues. They strain the limited resources of municipal governments and undermine the economic well-being of our cities, the engines of national growth, competitiveness and productivity.
As I mentioned at the outset, all federal housing funds are scheduled to end by March 2009. The federal government must end the chronic uncertainty about affordable housing and play a strong leadership role by committing to a long- term strategy.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities report has also been shared with our federal, provincial and territorial ministers of housing. We urge all governments to take ownership of this issue and work with municipalities to find a lasting solution.
FCM and our municipal governments stand ready to take their part. We appreciate your interest and we hope that you will also assist us in our long-term goals. Thank you.
Don Fairbairn, Consultant, City of Vancouver: It is a pleasure for me to address this committee this morning. I would like to discuss with you initiative called Streetohome that began in Vancouver. It is focused on delivery supportive housing to people who are homeless. The Streetohome initiative believes that if we focus on engaging communities and lowering the cost of giving, we can raise significantly more philanthropic funding and increase leadership and advocacy, to ensure that, in the long run, we can turn the tide of homelessness.
I wish to reflect on Mayor DeCicco-Best's comments about the need to take ownership and not only of the problem but of the solution. Our view is that we actually need to push the ownership right down to citizens of communities. It is our habit in this country to look up to government to solve these issues. As citizens, if you live in a city and suffer the consequences indirectly of homelessness, through both economic and social distress, and if people who are homeless live in your neighbourhoods, then it is our view that it is your problem, our problem to solve, as members of the community.
What we really want to do is engage communities to accept this view. We think we need to do that by achieving a couple of objectives. First, encourage middle-income earners and small businesses, as well as high net worth individuals and large businesses, to contribute, with confidence, resources and leadership. The challenge is: How do you generate confidence?
Our view is that you do that by engaging community members. How do you engage? We see this as a classic challenge of bringing the interests of non-profits, various governments and government agencies, as well as community leaders together. We propose to do that in two ways. One is to create a foundation, a more traditional body, and the other is to create an investment vehicle.
Let us talk a little bit about middle-income earners. They are individuals who do not have a lot of capital and do not necessarily have a lot of resources to contribute, but suffer a high degree of anxiety. They are often parents, both working in the household with children in a neighbourhood and feel threatened and insecure as to not knowing what to do.
We have engaged the leadership of a major Canadian bank, which has agreed to establish Streetohome accounts. These will be deposit accounts. Depositors will deposit their capital; it will be theirs; it can be withdrawn when they need it, but when it is on deposit the interest earned would be directed to the Streetohome foundation. In this way, we think the bank will inspire and encourage its customers to believe that this is a worthy cause, that there is a basis for its clients to have confidence in giving. On an individual basis, it may not be substantial, but collectively it could well be meaningful.
With respect to high net worth individuals and large businesses, it is our view that we need to lower the cost of philanthropy. If you cannot get people to invest, typically you make it more attractive, but in addition to lowering the cost of philanthropy we will offer people the opportunity to lead. A lower cost of philanthropy will not arise simply by writing a cheque. We are saying you can lower your cost of giving by investing. If you invest, you will be exposed to whether or not supportive housing is effectively delivered.
If it is not properly delivered, if the support services are not well delivered, the costs of your giving will be higher. If it is well delivered, the costs of your giving will be lower. It is not that these individuals would profit; rather, the cost base of their philanthropy would be exposed to the ability of non-profit housing providers and the system as a whole to properly and effectively deliver support services.
We propose to do this through a limited partnership structure that would require amendments to the federal Income Tax Act. We had hoped that these amendments would be included in this past budget. They were not, but we will continue to work either through the proposed structure or an alternative structure to ensure that we can achieve this objective.
It is really the combination of these two initiatives, these two ideas — to inspire confidence in middle-income earners and to make it more attractive for high net worth individuals and corporations to participate — that we think we can engage the broader community in providing leadership and advocacy.
This point of advocacy is critical. We all appreciate that homeless people are not a strong lobby. They do not form a lobby. Most do not vote. The voices that advocate on their behalf today are too busy competing for scarce funding, they do not necessarily collaborate effectively. It is our view that the broader community has to speak on their behalf. It is in fact in the self-interest of the community to speak on their behalf. We just have to make it easier for them to do that.
I will give you an example of why we think this works. In Vancouver, we have raised $75 million of new philanthropic investment from high net worth individuals, conditional upon federal tax changes. The City of Vancouver has committed $50 million in 12 sites for $1, which is unprecedented. The city has agreed to waive property taxes and development fees. These sites would result in the construction of 1,200 units for both supportive and affordable housing.
As I mentioned, we have a major Canadian bank that will establish Streetohome accounts. If it works in Vancouver, we are of the view it could work elsewhere. Again, our hypothesis is that in order to solve the issue we cannot continue to look to senior governments for funding. As citizens, we cannot continue to say, ``Please solve this problem for us.'' It is with that objective that we are working hard in implementing Streetohome in Vancouver, throughout the province of British Columbia, and with the bank's commitment, across each of the banks in the financial sector — and, of course, if we are successful, nationally.
Sean Gadon, Director, Affordable Housing Office, City of Toronto: It is indeed a pleasure to be here on behalf of the City of Toronto to make a presentation on affordable housing and homelessness. On behalf of Mayor David Miller and members of city council, I wish to commend you on including affordable housing as a priority in your work.
With some 1.4 million Canadian households in housing need and more than 200,000 of those alone in the city of Toronto, the need for national action is both real and urgent. I am here today to testify on the progress we are making through the affordable housing partnership between the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada.
This year, approximately 2,500 low-income residents in Toronto will get a new lease on life with the opening of 1,000 new affordable homes, made possible through federal investments from the affordable housing program. As well, almost 700 Toronto families and individuals will live in safer and better-maintained homes from investments made through the federal Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program. Furthermore, some 1,500 Toronto homeless people will have found homes from the street in the past three years thanks to the federal Homelessness Partnering Strategy.
Finally, due to the federal government's long-term investment through the national social housing program, more than 250,000 Toronto residents will continue to live in safe and affordable homes.
These national housing and homelessness programs and the positive results they produce are no less than housing life rafts to the families and individuals who have been set adrift in a turbulent housing market that they cannot compete in or afford.
I am here today to testify that the continuation of national homelessness programs and housing initiatives are essential if Toronto is to continue to thrive while providing opportunity for all.
To advance our collective efforts, the City of Toronto recently released an affordable housing framework, which we call Housing Opportunities Toronto. I have left copies for you today. The framework calls for a long-term approach to affordable housing, matched with sufficient and sustainable investments, and recommends specific actions that all three governments can take.
When we examined the impact of investing in affordable housing, we discovered the positive power that it brings to the community. We discovered that affordable housing promotes and sustains four key objectives: economic development, environmental sustainability, livable neighbourhoods and healthy people. It promotes economic development by enabling key workers to live where they work and attracts skilled labour and newcomers. It creates environmental sustainability by reducing energy costs to low-income families and reducing the consumption of energy from polluting sources. It creates liveable neighbourhoods by promoting mixed-income communities and better outcomes for low-income people, including supporting community safety in priority neighbourhoods. Last, but not least, it creates healthy people by promoting mental and physical health and reducing the pressure on our health care system.
In 2007, the three levels of government invested $716.8 million in Toronto in affordable housing and homelessness programs. These are essential programs. Our Housing Opportunities Toronto framework proposes that over time an additional $469 million is required to address the unmet housing needs of 200,000 households.
Key investments are essential to help the homeless, assist renters, create new housing, repair existing homes, and provide first-time home ownership assistance. Today, just one week after the release of the federal budget, we still require a sign or a commitment from the federal government that it will respect and extend its legacy of housing low- and moderate-income Canadians. We require a renewed commitment in 2008 to key federal initiatives that are to expire, as the mayor of London has indicated, in March 2009: the Canada-Ontario Affordable Housing Program, the Homelessness Partner Initiative and the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program. We require the reinvestment of federal social housing funding as well to repair and rehabilitate Toronto's 90,000 social housing units. Further investments in new affordable housing will pay very big dividends and build a stronger and healthier city and country.
That is why the City of Toronto, in its pre-budget submission, called on Ottawa to:
. . . deliver a national action plan on housing and homelessness that would renew and strengthen federal investments over the long term and provide funding of $3.35 billion annually to be shared by all levels of government.
Federal investment is needed to realize the goal of revitalizing housing communities that were built 40 and 50 years ago. Toronto Community Housing in my community has started this task with the redevelopment of Regent Park — a $1-billion initiative in downtown Toronto. Much more needs to be done. Federal investment is also needed to realize the potential of affordable housing that was first proposed 20 years ago in the West Don Lands, where 1,200 affordable homes require funding as part of Toronto's waterfront renewal. Currently, the money is not there, yet the land is in public ownership. For 20 years we have been trying to realize that objective. We are ready to go, but we need the federal partnership.
These are just two examples of the potential and the opportunity to be created through new investments in affordable housing. With our private sector and community partners, the City of Toronto stands ready and willing to make this and much more happen. Once again, I wish to commend and thank the committee for its support in investigating this issue today.
The Chair: I appreciate the comments you make, Madam Mayor, about sustainable level funding and I agree it is absolutely needed. We are in a state of uncertainty that is causing us all a bit of angst.
Mr. Gadon has outlined a number of statistics that show the City of Toronto is making some progress in housing people. He talked about the number of units but I cannot help but think that for every step forward, we are still a step back in the sense that the lists get longer. The waiting list for the City of Toronto has almost 70,000 applicant names. Some people are waiting 5-10 years. It has been in that numeric level for some time now and is not encouraging. Your last comment that a lot more needs to be done is certainly evident. We also hear about the units in the city of Toronto that are difficult to occupy or assigned to people because of the maintenance that is required on them first.
You have all talked about the current federal programs expiring a year from now. Do you think that those programs should be renewed as they stand or do you see a new approach to spending that money? Do you want to see some revisions to the kind of programming or federal assistance?
I note the bringing together of the partnership in different parts of the community in Vancouver. Certainly, we have been looking at the involvement of the private sector in the community. As well, we will have Mr. Philip Mangano, who spoke to the FCM conference last year in Calgary, here this spring to speak to the U.S. model with respect to homelessness. I also note a comment made to this committee by Cathy Crowe, a street nurse in Toronto, who says that she does not like his model. Her concern is:
The planning and funding of homeless services are now, in her words, focused on removing the visible homeless from the streets while at the same time reducing shelter beds and limiting emergency services for the homeless.
She is concerned that there is too much focus on what you see on the street — chronic homeless folks in that condition — as opposed to many more that are not seen on the streets.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: One year is not a long time. At the bare minimum, we need a signal that the existing funding will reach past March 2009. The whole reason that FCM Big City Mayors has made this one of its national priorities is that we have yet to see, over decades, a national housing strategy that does not put us in the same position at the eleventh hour, year after year. We hope that we are stimulating the kind of dialogue that will ask the federal government and all parties, because this is something that transcends all parties, to make sure that we have a program that is long-term with sustainable funding that we can all count on.
The plan that we have released will not have all the answers. It does not have all the detail that some people would like, but we were trying to put in place a framework that we could take to the federal, provincial and territorial governments and say, this is a starting point. We need those governments to take the leadership role to develop something that can meet the needs and be as flexible as possible, with the kind of funding that we are looking at, so that each community and province can take what they can take from it and make it work for their own cities. At a minimum, we need to hear that beyond a year from now that funding will be in place. We hope that between now and next year the government will take this on and develop a long-term plan, and we all want to be part of it.
We have not said that this has to be just federal government funding. In fact, of the $3.35 billion we talk about in our plan, approximately $2 billion of that is already in the system. We want that to continue but there is room because we see surplus budgets that everyone looks at as additional funding that might be available to have something that becomes longer term.
I can give you one example of London. We are often asked, if the federal government will do everything, what about the individual municipalities? The City of London has put in approximately $2 million for new affordable housing, an additional $12 million every year on existing programs, and has developed a local framework, much like that of Toronto and Vancouver and others. The first goal is to have 1,200 new, affordable housing units by the year 2010. We are well past 700 units already. We have not waited for other governments to come to the table. We have tried to take a leadership role locally because we know this issue will not go away. However, we cannot continue to sustain this one year at a time and continue to wonder what will happen at the last minute. In fairness to your question, it is a little bit of both but we are looking at long-term from the government.
Mr. Fairbairn: In terms of funding, it is clear that some predictability is required. These investments are difficult and require long lead development times. Trying to prioritize where one should focus scarce resources at a municipal level is difficult if you do not have the confidence of funding. Certainly, that is the case within a five-year horizon, which is the typical horizon to try to develop, rezone, and get neighbourhoods onside for locating supportive and affordable housing. It is not a short-term problem. The lack of confidence and availability of funding makes it difficult to move forward with any confidence. I certainly echo Mayor DeCicco-Best's comments.
With respect to your quote from Cathy Crowe, the street nurse, she has legitimate concerns. The challenge is where to focus scarce resources. If there is only a certain allocation of resources to allocate across the housing continuum, what makes sense? What is most important to individuals? The majority of people that we have spoken with see the affordable housing problem as being difficult for individual citizens within the city to comprehend or do anything about. The solution relies not just on funding from senior governments but also on broad economic leverage. It relies on changes in policy, the approaches to welfare funding, retraining, industrialization and the whole gamut of policy levers available to government.
Individual citizens, on the other hand, can see and benefit from their input into dealing with the visible homeless. It seems straightforward that while you can be critical of focusing on the visible homeless, it is something that we can achieve as communities, that something being the elimination of homelessness on the street.
In Vancouver, we are focused not just on those visible with this program. We are working with the provincial government. We hope to work with the introduction of a community court. The idea of the Streetohome foundation is that each of the province, the city and the health authority would nominate independent professional directors. We are in the process now of seeking those nominations.
The foundation would act to provide a transparent accountable table, where the immediate pathways into homelessness can be better managed, for example, people who fall off the table as a consequence of the justice system not working for them, or people referred to the psychiatric ward because they have been picked up in an ambulance and assessed. When they are discharged two or three days later, nobody is there for them and they end up back on the street.
With respect to the opportunity to resolve high, visible community-based issues, we would say yes, focus there, perhaps at the expense of focusing on other elements of the continuum of the housing dilemma. Again, as community members, where should you put your capital and leadership? The response we get for the most part is on the visible homeless issue.
Mr. Gadon: I would take a broader perspective in the sense of, you could solve the street homelessness problems in this country but still have a housing crisis. You would still have many people in this country that would be living in accommodations they cannot afford or that would be in poor repair. I have to point, for instance, to members of the Aboriginal community. Many of them live in homes, but as we are well aware, the quality of those homes is highly suspect.
I would suggest that the approach to this issue is not homelessness per se; it is about housing. It is about ensuring that every person in this country has access to a decent and affordable place to live. That should be the Canadian objective or the goal we are trying to achieve or the principle that, indeed, there should be some ability for assistance to reach you regardless of whether you live in Corner Brook, Toronto, North Bay or Burnaby.
With respect to the programs that exist today, the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, RAPP, has been in existence since the 1970s. Clearly, it is a good program and should not have to be on an annual renewal. The Homelessness Partnership Initiative has been going on since December of 1999. That particular program is magnificent because it permits local innovation and creativity where the federal government provides, based on a community plan, funding, but the community decides on the priorities, recognizing that they will differ depending on the community. Sixty-one communities across the country participate in that initiative. It is an initiative that promotes innovation, creativity and engagement, where people at the local level help to solve their problems.
The Canada-Ontario Affordable Housing Program, which is an initiative that was announced in 2000, is another example of an important housing program. In that instance, it too is prescriptive. While we are providing new supply on the ground in communities across the country, we are finding indeed that because it is pegged primarily to a CMHC average market rent, it is not affordable to the 66,000 people in Toronto on our waiting list. In those instances, we need a companion initiative that helps bring those rents down to what a person can afford. Rather than a rental unit coming on stream for $1,100 in Toronto for a two-bedroom, the program should bring it down to about $600 because that is what a family making $20,000 to $25,000 a year can afford. If it was less prescriptive, we would be able to better manage those at the local level.
If there is a message across all of this, we need to be thinking about people first, where they are and what they need. Our Streetohome program that has gotten 1,500 people off the street in the last three years went to them and asked them what they would like or need to solve their condition of homelessness. The answer that came back was, ``I would like a home. I do not want a shelter bed. I do not want to be taken to a hospital or to a mental institution; I would like to have a home.'' It is pretty basic. That is what we need to get back to.
The Chair: I will now turn it over to my colleagues, starting with the deputy chair of the committee, Dr. Keon, from Ottawa.
Senator Keon: Thank you. I enjoyed all of your presentations. I have been fascinated over the years with social inequities, particularly health inequities. Regarding the hundreds of programs that have been initiated at the federal, provincial and municipal levels, I have come to the conclusion that the major barrier to solving social inequities, and Mr. Gadon has just hit on it, has been a lack of organization at the community level. We throw the word ``community'' around, and we do not know what it means because communities are not defined in Canada.
If we could have more community development, particularly in the megacities that people at the community level could come together and help themselves tremendously and develop a sense of pride in their housing and in the other dozen or so social determinants that help transform their lives from one of dependency to one of productivity.
Mr. Fairbairn, you alluded to it as well in Vancouver. I am aware from other testimony that there is housing coming down in Vancouver for impoverished people and no planning for replacement of it in the downtown area.
What must occur collectively through government and NGOs, first, is to try to break Canada down from the federal-provincial-municipal level into communities and have vertical integration of communities with various levels of government.
There is tremendous opportunity for horizontal integration at the community level so you can get to the individual, as has been mentioned, and satisfy his or her needs rather than coming in at the top with a huge program without connectivity to the personal needs of the individual.
I ask all three of you to respond, and I hope that you leave here with a dedication to some strategy to identify workable communities to correct the social inequities in Canada.
Mr. Gadon: Someone mentioned Philip Mangano, the United States interagency counsel advisor to the President of the United States. That speaks to me of federal leadership. Through his work, there are probably now in excess of 300 different American communities engaged in solutions to homelessness. Through the Homelessness Partnership Initiative in Canada, as I mentioned earlier, we have engaged 61 communities since 1999.
I believe, certainly in the city of Toronto and the work I have done across the country — that there is tremendous community will to solve these issues. They may not be heard as loudly at the federal level because perhaps the federal, provincial and territorial levels are not seen as the levels people go to in solving these problems; but they are the bread and butter of what our municipal councils and the agencies on the street are dealing with.
All we are asking for, frankly, is to continue the partnerships and continue with the leadership that can come from the federal, provincial and territorial governments so the work we have started can continue. In particular, if you look at housing, it is not something you can plan in a week, a month or a year. It requires a site purchase, hiring an architect and construction of a building. These are multi-year initiatives requiring those sorts of commitments. I can assure you that at the community and municipal level, the community and political will is there in spades.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: When I look at our housing strategy in the City of London, it has to a large degree worked because we had federal and provincial dollars. Without that I can tell you we would not have been able to move forward with our strategy. Every new housing complex we have built with our new affordable housing strategy has always been with a non-profit organization and others that have experience in that area. While we have been able to provide funding from three levels of government to help them get the project off the ground, in many of those cases people outside of the municipality run it.
What is important about that and what we are looking for is that from province to province the rules are very different. I was interested when Mr. Fairbairn said they were able to offer tax-free incentives in British Columbia because I know you cannot do that in Ontario.
These issues are dealt with very differently from province to province, which is why we require flexibility in any kind of housing strategy. It needs to be set up so that each community can deal with its issues very differently. Toronto will have a much different focus and view because they have a greater number of individuals on the street.
In London, our waiting list for affordable housing is about 3,400 people. That is a lot for a city of 350,000. We have done very well because it used to be 4,000. We are making gains but are almost to the point where, because the money is almost out, we do not have anywhere else to turn from other levels of government. We will not be able to continue to provide some of those funding sources to non-profit agencies so they can continue to build houses and continue to help subsidize where necessary to help people meet market rent, et cetera.
When Mr. Gadon talks about people needing a place to live and it is about housing, many of the people that would also be part of these programs right now are living paycheque to paycheque. It is not always just about the person that is literally on the street or someone who has mental illness or someone dealing with drug addiction. In many cases, we have people working for a living who can barely make the rent. If they are living paycheque to paycheque, it is our obligation to keep them off all the other government subsidy programs that they will rely on by helping them in a small way to pay their rent or mortgage and stay in their homes and provide for their families.
The programs must be flexible, but in no way, shape or form do we think it is only a government problem. We have been dealing with it in our community. I know others, the ones I am most familiar with in Ontario, have taken that same approach.
Mr. Fairbairn: Thank you for those comments, Senator Keon. You made a couple of observations unique to Vancouver when you commented on the fact that you had heard prior testimony of housing in the inner city of Vancouver coming down, effectively being demolished and not being replaced. I will give you a couple of numbers to try to frame that issue.
In the inner city, there are around 5,000 hotel units. I call them hotel units. They are referred to as ``SRO hotels,'' single resident occupancy hotels. They are comprised of 10 ft. by 10 ft. rooms and are very old. They hearken back to the early industrial roots of the city of Vancouver. Those are the buildings that are coming down. Over the past year, the Province of British Columbia acquired 950 of those units. They are now being rehabilitated and refurbished in a joint funding effort between the City of Vancouver and the province, and there will be federal funding to assist in the redevelopment of those 950 units.
The twelve sites I referred to earlier will result in the development of 1,200 new supportive housing and affordable units. Broadly, there is an excess of 2,000 that will go a long way to replacing the stock of 5,000 10 ft. by 10 ft. rooms that must be replaced.
While there is a loss of housing, there is a plan, and substantial efforts are being made to either upgrade or replace that SRO stock. It is a difficult challenge given the high cost of land and construction in the inner city of Vancouver.
I also wanted to comment on your observation, if I can characterize your comments, of trying to pull the solution down to the level of the individual. It is a really complex environment. We have individuals who are not well. There are health issues here. There are issues of individual capacity. It is granted that not everyone is so disabled that they cannot work. Many of the homeless do work. This image of a senior body coming down with a solution is precisely the image that many citizens have, and we know that will not work.
I will speak just to Vancouver, if I may. One of the big issues is that there is no one agency or ministry of government that is responsible for the solution. It requires the cooperation of the Ministry of Health, the Attorney General, the Minister of housing and the Minister of Employment and Income Assistance. Governments are not good at driving programs to suit the needs of individuals, but manage programs based on a budget that has ministerial objectives. Their objectives are not tied to individuals moving across the system. One of our arguments is that we need to, just as Mr. Gadon has suggested, respond to the needs of individuals. Governments do not do a good job of that. The best way to do that is to push the delivery of services right down to the community level. However, the only way we can effectively do that is to provide confidence to the participating organizations that they will have money for longer than the next 12 months.
The majority of people who deliver social work critical to the survival of good housing are employed by non-profit organizations, they do not have human resource groups and the support workers themselves give the very best they can everyday for next to no return and no celebration of their achievements.
The Streetohome foundation will support the support workers, providing counselling and training for them and work to intercede between them and each of the government agencies I referred to in order to ensure support services are properly delivered.
If we have high net worth individuals invested in this, they will be very strong advocates. They will go to a premier, regardless of what party they are from, and say, ``We helped elect you. We have capital invested and it is at risk. Do a better job of this, please.''
I think I would agree that funding must continue to come from senior governments, but the responsibility for delivery of the service needs to reside at the level of the community.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: If I understand correctly, each municipality, each city must be in a position to solve its own problems and to work with various groups. Federal and provincial governments cannot do it for them.
If cities were able to work with the various stakeholders in their community, the federal government would just have to ensure multi-year funding. Cities would then be able to set up the core programs they need to build housing. Your responsibility would then be to help the homeless.
Is this the only role, or the best role, that the federal government should be playing, funding programs for a number of years? Then cities would not have to worry about it. The problem would be solved at the source in each of your municipalities.
[English]
Ms. DeCicco-Best: There is no question that we are looking for the leadership from a funding perspective from the federal government. I believe, in terms of the last question, that municipalities need the flexibility to develop or take from that program what is needed to meet the individual needs and to achieve that flexibility.
However, I still think there is a role for the federal government, not just in providing money for five years and then go away. We are hoping it will be a partnership between all levels of government. It must come at the leadership of the federal government because this is a country-wide issue. It is a crisis issue in a lot of ways when you have people that are either living on the street or not living on the street but can barely afford where they are living or have the kind of housing, as Mr. Gadon spoke about earlier, that has no dignity with it. It is one thing to have a roof over your head. It is different when you have a room that is 10 ft. by 10 ft. and falling apart. There is no dignity in living there. It is no different than living on the street.
To me, the federal government should say housing is a priority, we will deal with it as a priority, we will develop a long-term strategy, we will have funding that will be sustainable for the long term and can be counted on and we want to work with each province to ensure it is flexible enough to meet the needs of the individual cities within their provinces.
In the past, sometimes programs were so prescriptive that it was difficult to pull anything out of them. It was almost better not to have the program at all or it would have to be bypassed because it almost cost more to try to implement it or it would not meet the needs. It is more than saying we want the money. We need the government to recognize this is an issue in our country.
When we talk about municipalities, we always talk about municipalities being the engine behind the economy. If we want to compete on a global front for companies, jobs, wealth and a strong economy, we have to address the issue of housing. We want the federal government to be right at the top of this and to show the leadership.
I would give them all the credit. We do not need any credit at the local level for doing any of this, but we need to stimulate the discussion through the policy of FCM and Big City Mayors Caucus because we have not yet seen any kind of long-term sustainable plan for any time period, at least in the last 10 years, probably longer. It is across all parties. We need the federal government to be at the forefront and to say that housing is a critical issue. Then we will develop from there.
Mr. Fairbairn: In terms of the role of the federal government, I agree completely that leadership through funding is essential, not just metaphorically but the reality of it.
The interesting thing about annual or multi-year funding as distinct from funding through the tax regime is that there is an administrative burden placed on organizations and individuals who have to apply to grant programs. There is a place for grant programs. The majority of federal funding is delivered through grant programs, but there are non- profit organizations that say 20 per cent of their administrative overhead is dedicated towards applying for funding. Some say it is an even higher number. It seems like an awfully inefficient way to allocate capital.
While we think multi-year grant funding has a role, we are strong advocates of tightly targeted tax reform that enables individuals and communities, if they so choose, to make investments. Rather than the federal government collecting the tax revenue and then redistributing it, we are saying that it is possible with well administered highly targeted tax reform to attract capital that is otherwise not invested in housing today.
There is quite a bit of capital through CMHC and the regular structured mortgages that attract 6 per cent or 7 per cent returns. There is no reason why we cannot introduce a slice of equity from companies and individuals at a lower after-tax cost based on tax reform.
The leadership, in our view, is not just the continuity of grant funding and the acceptance that it is a national issue, but we also believe there needs to be a degree of tax incentive to build more supportive housing. Of course, the bigger challenge is how to deal with the affordable housing dilemma, which is much more expensive. I will leave it at that.
Mr. Gadon: With respect to the role of the federal government, we are going through and perhaps coming towards the end of a period of sustained economic growth over the past five to eight years. Clearly, it is the role of the federal government to be able to see these macro issues in the context of what the future might hold for the country and for the people. If indeed we do go into a downturn, I can assure you from a housing and homeless perspective that we are not prepared.
In addition to that, the federal government's current investment in the housing system, if you will, is about $2 billion. The majority of that money will have essentially been pulled back by the federal government by around the year 2030.
On an annual basis, federal subsidies for the existing social housing that has been built up over the last 60 years are on the decline. We are seeing less money invested as opposed to more. It is the federal government's role, I believe, not only to write a cheque but also to set a national framework and to be able to plan for the country because the federal government best understands the challenges of the nation.
The FCM and I would both suggest to you that housing is no different than roads, bridges and public transit. It should receive the same priority and be planned in the same way.
Senator Callbeck: I want to ask you about the housing programs that will be ending in March 2009, which is not a long way away. I know that in my own province, and I am certain it is the same in others, that there are waiting lists for some programs and the wait times are longer for others.
What is the reaction when the municipalities make presentations to the federal government about these programs? Are you optimistic that the government will renew these programs?
Ms. DeCicco-Best: We had hoped that we would hear something about housing in the recent budget. I will give the government credit, we heard about permanent gas-tax funding, which is great for infrastructure. We heard about a program about policing, which was encouraging, and we heard about some money for transit, which was encouraging, but we did not hear much about housing at all. In fact, national agencies across this country were very critical and concerned because a year will fly by and there is already a bit of a panic — albeit small — within community agencies that recognize that a year is just around the corner.
The reason we are pushing and trying to take every opportunity we can to make this a headline story at the national level is that we need to have a signal of some sort. The first question that the chair asked was whether we want it to exist the way it is or in some new format. At the minimum, I say again, I need to know that that $2 billion will be there past March of next year. Then a secondary line is, we will work towards providing a new national framework that we can all rally around as cities, provinces, as a government, as a country, to say housing is a priority for Canada. We have to say that we will do everything possible to put a long-term strategy in place with some funding behind it that makes a very compelling case that this is a priority for Canada.
I think you will hear more from cities such as London, Toronto and others that will keep this issue at the forefront. I am still waiting to hear, as big city mayors are waiting to hear, something more substantial at the federal level.
Senator Callbeck: I can certainly understand the panic. As you say, that time will fly, and not to have any commitment from government is unbelievable at this time.
The Chair: Does anyone else on the panel want to comment?
Mr. Gadon: In December 2006, the government renewed the rehabilitation program and the homelessness initiative for a two-year cycle. In that regard, one can be somewhat optimistic that the government believes in these programs. However, the problem becomes one of timing relative to the agencies that deliver these programs at the community level. There is a tremendous lag time between an Ottawa announcement and its local implementation; at times, it can take months.
We also know, because of the last renewal of both the rehab program and the homelessness program that they were completed outside of a budget cycle. We know it is not necessary to wait until the next federal budget in 2009. The real question is why would we be on tenterhooks?
I am led to believe that the federal minister is meeting with some of his provincial counterparts in April. He and his provincial counterparts met in Vancouver in February — the provincial and territorial housing minister's — and they called for the renewal of these programs. There seems to be a strong consensus and we are hopeful and optimistic that the federal government will act sooner than later.
I will say one thing about last week's federal budget. There was a new initiative that committed $120 million to the Canadian Mental Health Commission to work on issues related to mental health, which is very important work. We know very little of what that might be at the local level.
The issue of mental health and homelessness is critical, but it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the extent of the issue. While that is one area where the federal government can take a leadership role, the extent of the investments needs to be well beyond that.
Senator Callbeck: I hope that the federal government moves on this because time is of the essence.
You mentioned tax changes in Vancouver that you had hoped would be in the last budget but were not announced. Those tax changes are to make it more attractive for high-income people to invest. Could you briefly outline those tax changes?
Mr. Fairbairn: The most important and difficult change requires legislation that would have to go through the House. That change would provide limited partnership units, the same tax treatment as afforded the donation of the shares of publicly traded Canadian corporations. That was a change the government made a couple of years ago. It has been very successful. Many charities have benefited by the receipt of donated shares of publicly traded corporations.
The first request is to extend that legislation to include limited partnerships that invest only in supportive housing. Again, tightly targeted to ensure there is no unanticipated tax leakage.
The second change would require an Order-in-Council, to allow rental income losses to be achieved during the period of the investment. The other change is a ruling, received by letter from the Canada Revenue Agency to facilitate the structure.
The primary objective is to get legislative change to address the donation of limited partnership units.
Senator Callbeck: The other part of that was about the interest. You say you have an arrangement with the bank. The bank will try to talk people into allocating their interest to your project.
Mr. Fairbairn: We are working with one of the major Canadian banks, which is supporting this effort, and which will provide the marketing. The bank will advertise in each of its branches and convey the plan its customers. The bank client can put his or her savings in a Streetohome account and it will look like any other deposit account, but for the fact that the interest earned on the account will be redirected to the Streetohome foundation or any homeless foundation of the client's choice.
Senator Callbeck: That interest on that account goes to the foundation and the client does not have to pay income tax on the amount.
Mr. Fairbairn: The client is taxed on the interest; however, he or she receives a tax receipt from the foundation to use to write off as a charitable donation.
Senator Callbeck: Has anyone else ever tried this idea?
Mr. Fairbairn: The bank says no. Vancity, a credit union in Vancouver, had a similar program some time ago.
We have asked the bank whether they think this is worth doing. They know their customer base, they know how their customers respond to initiatives like this, and they feel quite confident. The general premise is that quite a few people really do not think of the interest that is earned on a deposit, particularly one that is there for safekeeping. The interest rates are very low.
The bank is also of the view that there may be substantial depositors that may be prepared to have interest redirected. They think it is new money, money that is otherwise not directed towards homelessness. As I said earlier, you need to inspire confidence and, in this case, make it easy for people to contribute.
The Chair: I have a supplementary question about these tax changes. For purposes of our research, can you cite the pertinent sections of the Income Tax Act? Do you have an estimate of the impact on the fiscal framework, that is, the loss of revenue on those accounts?
Mr. Fairbairn: The citation is quite long.
The Chair: Maybe you can send it to us.
Mr. Fairbairn: The appendix of the report that I provided to the committee details the required amendments.
With respect to the fiscal impact, we estimated the value of the foregone tax revenue would be approximately $350 million over 10 years. That is total, not annual. It is not significant from a federal perspective because there is a provincial tax impact as well. This is a marginal reduction. We think there is great leverage in terms of the benefit to the federal government that for a little foregone tax revenue might achieve somewhere in the order of $700 million to $1 billion dollars of new philanthropic investment in homelessness.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Like Dr. Keon, I am a doctor and I think we always triage things. What is the emergency? What is most acute?
I look at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' strategy and I respond to the fact that homelessness was in first place. To me, that is the number one problem. I have been to Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto recently. I am not eliminating Atlantic Canada when I speak about homelessness because while not as much an issue in the region, it is there. It seems to me that the great bleeding wound in Canada is homelessness.
It is not always our youth who are homeless; it can be people from throughout the age life cycle and seniors. However, more often than not, it is youth. I suggest that nearly all these people are suffering from some form of mental illness or addiction. I think we can probably classify every young person running away from home as a mental illness or addiction. I think all those people are more or less suffering from depression or depressed with their life situation.
We also have done the mental health study where the homeless issue is big. Was this placed at number one by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities because of the kind of thing I am echoing or did this just happen to be number one? Should this be what we make Canada's priority over the next five to ten years?
I also understand the issue of affordable housing and the need to upgrade housing for Canadians who need housing. I will leave the question at that.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: Let me say again that the targets and the strategy that Big City Mayors Caucus and FCM puts together comes as a package because each involves the other. There is no question that when dealing with the issue of homelessness, mental health and addictions are very much part of that problem.
You are right on target when you say that is likely a large majority of the people living either on the street, in shelters or going from one transitional housing situation to another.
I want to pick up on what you said about seniors. I also want to come back to one of the most disturbing things we are finding in relation to the middle class that I mentioned. We are seeing more seniors now fitting this definition. It is a sad social commentary that elderly people cannot afford to live in a home. Some of these people have worked an entire lifetime, invested and perhaps raised families that grew up and gave back to the economy and are in a position where they cannot afford a home any longer. They literally are not able to live paycheque to paycheque, as I mentioned earlier, because whatever support they have is not enough to meet the rising cost of housing. We are seeing more seniors fitting the criteria and the definition. That is not good.
Mr. Fairbairn discussed who may provide or be part of a solution. It is even scarier that we are seeing more middle- class people that cannot afford housing either because housing is becoming too expensive for them to meet monthly rents or mortgage payments.
We are starting to witness a greater gap between those who can afford to have their own homes and those who cannot. That will continue to exert more pressure on the design of a housing strategy. The longer we wait to develop a long-term strategy, the wider the gap becomes and the more critical it is because you will have more people who will start to fit that criteria.
Some colleagues of mine, other mayors, have the good fortune that their provinces are extremely strong now in terms of the economy and the number of jobs being created; Alberta is a great example. However, they are also telling me that people cannot move to take those well-paid jobs because they cannot afford the high cost of housing that has increased along with the cost of all those other beneficial things. That is not a good continuum because it does not deal with both sides of the issue.
I talked about the five areas in our strategy and homelessness is there. It is part of the priority of each of those areas. If you miss one of these steps, it has a contributing factor to one of the others.
Mr. Gadon: A number of the required strategies are prevention strategies. You have to ask yourself why a person is homeless. A young person left in an abusive home does not necessarily have a mental illness, but definitely should not be in that abusive home.
A lot of work needs to be done on prevention. Persons taking a public health or a health perspective would understand that comment. Over the last 15-20 years, the issue has become much more complex in terms of the types of people that are homeless. The homeless are not just the skid row hobo who is using a Salvation Army drop-in. It is now everyone, including families and single mothers with children living in motel rooms. These are not good conditions. These are conditions that put people in a cycle of homelessness. Americans talk particularly, and we now do, about chronic homelessness; about people who have been in and out of the cycle of homelessness using up much of the available emergency resources.
The initiatives required are quite surgical in those instances, where you need housing with supports that specifically work for the individual and are case-driven, as opposed to some blanket program. You need to be on the street to figure out the match of services and supports required and then be in a position to place them and make it available. In Toronto, we have found that it is possible to take services and programs and bundle them in such a way that a chronically homeless person — someone on the street for 10-15 years or more — can move into housing. The solutions are there.
If parents are living on the street with their children, the parents will loose their children; they will be taken away from them. This issue affects women primarily because women in this country earn less than men earn. Single women with children are doubled up and tripled up and living in appalling housing, only because they need to keep their children. If they ended up on the street, their children would be taken from them. Many people in the country are considered the ``hidden homeless.''
Our proposed housing solutions would begin to deal with that problem as well, as opposed to saying, it is the tip of the iceberg and if we do not see that person on the street, then we do not have a problem.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I have a short follow-up question. There was a thread through your presentations about national leadership. More and more, and it scares me terribly, there is a failure of strong leadership in this country. Some say that it is a provincial problem; just give them some money. We do not have to set any standards or national leadership or have a great vision because it is provincial matter.
Groups like yours have a great responsibility, as do we, to call for strong national leadership. We do this on health, as Senator Munson has been calling for an autism strategy and I have been calling for early childhood development policy and child care. On the housing issue, all of you have made reference to that fact that unless this country is passionate from the Prime Minister down about the issue, it really will not change; do you agree?
Ms. DeCicco-Best: I agree 100 per cent. I could not have said it better. Again, I stress, if the perception is that housing is just a social issue, and perhaps that has been our problem in the past, no one will see it as an economic issue. If you do not see it as an economic issue, you cannot possibly think that our country will be able to compete on a global front when we have people without basic needs. I am 100 per cent behind your statement, senator.
Senator Munson: This is a human rights issue. I do not want to sound dramatic but we all recognize that we have a moral, ethical and financial obligation to help those who cannot help themselves because of life's circumstances.
Are people dying on our streets or in unacceptable shelters because, collectively, we have not done enough?
Mr. Fairbairn: Yes, senator. I will respond with reference to a recent study undertaken by the Vancouver City Police, who are the first responders. We deliver care to people who are homeless through the police.
People fall dead on the sidewalk due to overdose or they succumb to very poor immune systems. They do not know how to consume medical care. The way we deliver medical care is traditionally through clinics that require referrals. That means you must come to the clinic on a certain day at a certain hour. These folks do not know what time it is, much less what day it is in many circumstances. You cannot deliver that traditional medical care to this population. Therefore, we deliver care through emergency intake that is fronted by the police and then by fire and ambulance. In the Vancouver police study, over 30 per cent of all calls across the city during a two-week period of 24-hour days were the consequence of people who they thought, based on a reasonably subjective but statistically relevant assessment, were mentally ill. In the inner city, over 50 per cent of the police calls were related to people who are mentally ill. There are people dying in St. Paul's Hospital, the downtown hospital, which delivers daily care to the majority of the homeless. They are dying simply because of the exceedingly poor health conditions in terms of what they suffer from, and in terms of the way in which we deliver care to them.
I cannot give you a statistic as to the numbers on a daily basis but it is daily and it is not acceptable.
Mr. Gadon: A homeless person is compromised in respect of physical and mental health and life expectancy. I could not tell you because I am not a doctor when such a person would die but, in my career, I have met many homeless people, encouraged them, and attempted to find solutions to their homelessness because they deserve a better quality and quantity of life. That will not happen if they remain on the streets.
Vulnerable people are attacked; cars hit them; they are victimized while living outside. In Toronto, attached to a church in the downtown area, we have a homeless memorial with the names of hundreds of people who have died on the street or in vulnerable conditions. I cannot speak to the individual cases but it is known to happen.
Senator Munson: We talked about national leadership. I assume no one knows if anyone is drafting a national plan at this particular stage. I do not want to get personal but I have a son who works in the ByWard Market here in Ottawa, where he has befriended a person who is a street poet. My son brought home some of his beautiful poetry. The man has lived an interesting life yet he sits on the street, bundled up over the last couple of days.
We talked about local entrepreneurs and others. Who grabs it and who takes the leadership and who steps out? Where does that money come from? There is $75 million in Vancouver just sitting there, not doing a thing except earning a bit of interest. Who grabs hold of that street poet and says that the right to shelter is a good thing.
I do not see how you get to the point where someone among the people in the community who own the small shops and the big banks alike will step up to the plate in a real way and put this together. I still do not know how we will get there.
Mr. Fairbairn: There is legitimate and successful experience in Toronto of pulling people in, if you will. Last year, there was a successful straightforward outreach provincial-municipal-sponsored program in Vancouver. There are one or two very successful individuals working with the street homeless in Vancouver. One of them is Judy Graves, an employee of the City of Vancouver. Ms. Graves understands how to relate to individuals. She can reach out and, in a very short period of time, develop a degree of trust that otherwise does not exist in a traditional relationship between someone who is chronically homeless and an individual who is otherwise housed and normal.
You need to be skilled. You need to have enormous empathy and the ability to communicate with individuals who are so disenfranchised that they feel safer on the streets than they do in many other circumstances.
It is an outreach program. It is effective and basically what it does is bring people off the street into housing. Over time, it is designed to build trust and deliver supports to the individual. Something in the order of over 350 individuals have been housed in the last year through this outreach program. A very high percentage of them, in the order of 80 per cent, remain housed. It is done through highly skilled, committed individuals who can generate trust and provide a clearly better alternative to living on the street.
Senator Munson: What is the role of the private sector in that program?
Mr. Fairbairn: The private sector does not have a role in that program. The city and the provincial government fund it.
Senator Munson: Should the private sector have a role in such a program? We spoke with the American emissaries that we saw in Calgary at your FCM, with whom I was impressed. They seemed to have success stories in some of the inner cities in the United States.
Mr. Gadon: With respect to the initiatives in Toronto, there is a lot of charitable giving with much of it coming from the private sector to long-standing organizations such as the YWs and the Salvation Army. They all collect and use charitable money.
The private sector directly owns and operates some of our housing programs. In some of the programs, we have entrepreneur programs for young people in particular. For example, Eva's Initiatives in the west end, has a print shop where young people learn a trade in the graphic communications industry. We have companies that offer mentorships and teach at-risk and homeless people job skills. There are all sorts of initiatives that are happening on the ground. Many of them are innovative but they are very fragile at the same time.
At the beginning of my presentation, I referred to the amount of work that goes into making this happen. Partnerships, even marriages are difficult; they take work. Imagine multi-partners and the kind of work that would be required to achieve success. I have given you a few examples of the types of programs we are trying to sustain. They seem to make so much sense. These programs operate at the local level with the involvement of governments and the private sector as well.
Senator Munson: The line-ups, as you are telling us today, are getting longer. We accept that these are good programs. However, if you look at the numbers you have given us, they are staggering.
Mr. Gadon: Yes, they are staggering. The message I leave with you today is that the range of initiatives are showing results. What the FCM work has suggested is let us take these opportunities and build upon them.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: I concur with my colleagues that many no-for-profit agencies, developers and others want to become involved in these types of projects. They look for these special projects because they have a greater sense and knowledge of the consequences of what happens to a city when that city's youth are homeless or cannot afford housing.
In terms of the agencies that Mr. Fairbairn spoke about, front line agencies that deal with this all the time will have the greatest problem if funding runs out. These agencies deal with special needs individuals who are the most vulnerable in every community.
The agencies have a broad knowledge of the people on the streets. If, for instance, I know of a housing project that might provide housing for a number of people, all I have to do is contact the agencies. The agencies are part of an amazing network that knows the people who live on the streets. They know the people who have special needs such as mental health problems or addictions and they know where they send them for help. It is not difficult to find the people in need.
Senator Munson: I guess we could have developers with heart.
Mr. Gadon: You mentioned Mr. Mangano in the United States. His group discovered that law enforcement cannot solve this problem and I am pleased that in this morning's discussion we have not gone there.
In speaking with the local police, and I think this is the case in Vancouver as well, they are looking for this kind of support. They do not want to be the front line in solving these issues. They are looking for support because they do not want to deal with these issues. Similarly, the hospitals and other emergency services want to see programs that will divert people from their services as opposed to putting them in conflict with them.
Senator Fairbairn: Mayor DeCicco-Best, I think the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is one of the most important organizations in this country. It has been doing terrific service for its communities. As the years go on, I think you get peppier and peppier; you are not coming out to have those meetings and then quietly leave. You are making yourself and what you stand for charmingly aggressive in terms of all levels of government. I have a good mayor from Lethbridge, Alberta, and he thought the last meeting was pretty darn good.
This issue if made even more difficult because it can be found in so many of our cities. For instance, one of you mentioned Calgary and the oil sands. People come from every corner of Canada to find employment in Calgary. All too often, they come thinking they can get manual work that will provide them with security, a home, et cetera. When they get there, they find out that there is little need for manual labourers as the oil sands development is dependent on high technology. The oil sands development is in need of highly skilled people who have strong experience with computers et cetera.
Among the people coming to Alberta to find jobs are Canadians from the 40 per cent of our adult citizens that have day-to-day difficulty in reading and literacy. If you cannot read, you cannot acquire those marvellous jobs that everyone across the country thinks are readily available. To that extent, Calgary is experiencing enormous difficulties and has people on the streets who do not know where to go.
Every effort is being made. A lot of the issues that have been dealt with by levels of government in recent years have been helpful with that, but it is a huge problem. It is a different picture than people see.
There is a great opportunity for Vancouver to benefit from the Olympics and Paralympic Games. I am wondering the degree to which this will be an opportunity to help the homeless. I do not mean Vancouver alone, but other cities as well on that route to Vancouver as the world comes to visit us.
I wonder if the Olympic Games will enable Vancouver to turn a brighter face as far as the streets are concerned as well as other places in that province. It is there to do if you are able to do it.
As my colleagues are saying, so many of these people have other problems. However, to come out and be part of what could be a very vigorous and positive thing at a time when it is quite the other way — not just in your community but all across this country — could be a powerful thing.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: First, thank you for recognizing the work of the Big City Mayors Caucus and FCM. We have a renewed energy. I do not know if they sent me because I represent a smaller community. I offered to co-chair the issue of housing more than a year ago because I felt it was an issue of national importance. Due to the fact other communities than the megacities are sounding the alarm, people understand this affects communities of all sizes; it is not just about Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. I have a great respect for all those cities; they get a lot of national attention that has helped all of us. However, smaller communities struggle with the same issues.
We hope that through the Big City Mayors Caucus and our vigilance in keeping these issues at the forefront of government across Canada that we can make progress. We have seen it in other areas. We have seen it more in the last five or six years than we ever have before. However, that is because we do not stop; we keep trying. If we do not get something in one budget, we keep going on it. If we do not get an announcement, we keep at it.
As issues become our issues, you will continue to see the Big City Mayors Caucus, BCMC, continue to sound the alarm and continue to be at the forefront of those issues. With respect to Calgary, the mayor is an active member of BCMC. It is clear that as much as there is a great prosperity in places in Alberta, it still has needs. We have to look beyond that sometimes. You are right: There are people that go to places like that and think, ``This is my chance to get in there and make a lot of money.'' Once they get there, they realize they must deal with many of the same issues. Maybe the cost of living or cost of housing is too high. People still have to deal with those realities. That is why we are trying to ensure this becomes a priority for the country, not just trying to deal with it one city or one big city at a time. It affects all of us.
Mr. Fairbairn: Thank you, Senator Fairbairn, for your comments, particularly with respect to Vancouver.
I think the Olympics and the Paralympics have been a great catalyst for the examination on the public debate around the challenges of the inner city in Vancouver. Inner city issues have been the focus of the community, the city, the province, and the federal government, for years. However, they have never been hotter and more evident because of the upcoming Olympics.
The province has shown strong leadership in trying to increase its investment, as has the city. However, we will not have a ``sanitized'' Vancouver when the world comes to see the Olympics. There are international journalists in the city today. Dan Rather was there a few weeks ago. It will be an embarrassment in many aspects for citizens and governments. The problem is so intense and difficult that it cannot be solved between today and when the Olympics will be held. It would be a mistake to suggest that is the solution. Those would be misspent funds. Funds and programs need to be properly invested and structured to be effective, enduring and help people who need it. We cannot simply remove these people from the streets to satisfy the eyes of the world.
Given the enormity of the problem, the lead times required, the quantum of investments and the re-engineering of the services, we will not have a resolution of the issue. That cuts both ways. It will be embarrassing to some degree for citizens of Vancouver and of the country. However, I also think it will continue to shed light on the issues and be a tremendous leverage in terms of the challenges we face.
The Olympics represent a great opportunity to motivate people to drive to a solution. However, the games will not result in a solution.
Senator Fairbairn: I think the games themselves will be a tremendous lift for the province and for the city. I include the Paralympics always because they are outstanding. They offer a great sense of hope in the disabled community in Vancouver. The Paralympics illustrate that there are ways to live well and to do good and exciting things.
It will be a great time for you, but I understand what you are saying: One visit, marvellous though it may be, will not solve your issues. They may well leave behind a sense of understanding that was not there before.
Mr. Fairbairn: Our mayor would be delighted to hear you say that. Thank you.
The Chair: Let me ask you about those people who have housing but it is not affordable and not necessarily decent housing. For example, there are 67,000 applicants on the City of Toronto waiting list. Some of those people will wait up to 10 years. There are some results, but it is a very long wait with very slow progress. We do not even know if these programs will be renewed in another year. Therefore, there is that extra degree of uncertainty about where we are going.
What is the answer to make a big dent in these waiting lists? Are rent supplements a key part of the answer? What about affordable home ownership? We have had some good success with co-ops in this country. They have issues and concerns about the programs and the funding. However, in Toronto, we have many condominiums. In fact, it condominiums depress the housing rate simply because there are so many of them. In many cases, they are not affordable for many people. They are certainly not affordable for the people on the waiting list.
Affordable home ownership has been raised from time to time as something that is desirable; people having a sense of ownership and investment in their own property. Please talk about rent supplements, affordable homeownership and ways of making dents in those waiting lists.
Mr. Gadon: In the last number of years, we have adopted short- medium- and long-term approaches. The approach of building cooperative or non-profit housing in a community is a medium- to long-term approach because it will take three to five years for that product to come on stream and for that household to move in. That will then be there in the long term. We know that in 20 years or 30 years that housing will be affordable and a family in need will live there.
At the same time, given the nature of what we will call the crisis, interventions can be made that are quicker in nature. For instance, one thing we have been piloting in Toronto over the last number of years is a housing allowance where a household that is paying over 50 per cent of its income on housing would be eligible for rental assistance. Very little money is available for that type of approach, but a housing allowance recognizes that while the person may have a housing issue, he or she also has an income problem and that can be addressed. In the short term, where you have housing markets with vacancy rates, housing allowances can be quite effective. In a community like Calgary where there are no vacancy rates, it is difficult to get a landlord to agree to cap a rent and accept a subsidy. In that instance, you are more challenged in providing that type of an approach.
On the question of home ownership, in the city that I come from, approximately 50 per cent of the population rent, primarily because many of them are poor. However, there are individuals and families that are at the cusp of being renters. With some small assistance, and the FCM paper speaks specifically to this, they could become homeowners. That is not to say that a homeowner in a community is a better citizen, but it does provide the opportunity to build an asset base. Frankly, in one's old age, it is a hedge against poverty.
Within the continuum of programs being provided in the country, we should be looking at a range of solutions for renters, such as short-term rental assistance coupled with long-term building programs and, at the same time, at the margins, assisting individuals with small grants and loans so they can move from rental into ownership.
Ms. DeCicco-Best: Four out of the five strategies that we speak about within our policy focus exactly on your issue. It talks about expanding the stock. It talks about reducing the backlog. It talks about modernizing and preserving our stock of affordable housing.
The last one deals with the issue of the RRAP and extending that program. To give you one example of the cooperative efforts we have in the City of London, with our RRAP, we actually match with CHMC. We would provide $24,000, they provide $24,000 per unit, and that keeps the rent set at about 70 per cent of what CMHC says the market rents are. It makes it affordable for low-income earners and people with disabilities, who also have challenges. It at least gives them the opportunity to hit some minimum standards so they can afford to have their own housing unit. That is one example of what we do, but we do work on other programs. Within our strategy, we look at affordable housing and not just the issue of homelessness to develop a framework of what we think could happen across the country.
The Chair: We have run out of time, regrettably, but we do thank you for appearing and for your input today. It is most valuable to us.
I would ask colleagues to remain in their seats for a small business session, but this portion of the meeting is now adjourned.
The committee continued in camera.