It “sets Canada on a path to end homelessness over the next decade”
The federal budget, released last week, “sets Canada on a path to end homelessness over the next decade through strong measures to provide help, housing and health to Canadians who are homeless.” If we can take that as a commitment to do what’s necessary to end homelessness by 2035, that’s great news. But we emphasize that homelessness is only a small part of the housing crisis. Far, far more Canadians have homes but face stress and daily struggle with housing that is unaffordable or poor quality or too small, and with no guarantee against eviction, all of which undermines health, quality of life and even the economy. Ending homelessness is just one necessary step.
The budget offers hope for ending homelessness and also reasons for caution.
Hopeful signs:
- The budget statement, even if vague, sets a timeline and can guide action. Goals matter.
- The government recognizes the need for a breadth of investments—in new non-profit housing, both transitional and permanent; in health supports for those who need it; and in measures that includes jobs, training and income supports.
- Early polling shows the announcement is popular. Popular support is crucial to sustain the level of investment needed.
- The program includes what is, in effect, a pilot project in one city, Winnipeg. Canada has many programs that get homeless people housed. Can those scale up to get to zero in a big city? Testing, evaluating and supporting what works is key.
- The budget recognizes that this needs to be a national commitment. Places that successfully reduce homelessness succeed through co-ordination of all partners—all levels of government and the charitable sector.
Cautions:
- The wording doesn’t suggest a hard commitment to end homelessness, just to put us on a path to do so.
- The federal auditor, in 2022, found that Ottawa could not tell whether or not its homelessness programs were reducing homelessness. Has that changed?
- How will homelessness be counted? The budget says 65,000 people are homeless in Canada. That’s based on point-in-time counts, a one-day snapshot of those on the street or in shelters. Several times as many people are homeless but not counted, people for instance staying with friends and relatives, who are sheltered but still homeless and in needing of their own home.
- It’s not clear the spending and programs announced will actually put us on a path to end homelessness. Or they are almost certainly not large enough. The total looks like about $5 billion a year for the next few years. Most of that money is focused on rent support, various services and non-market housing, an improvement on the old National Housing Strategy that mostly subsidized for-profit housing. But it isn’t as ambitious as the goal. And even if it were sufficient, future governments may change course, as happened in Finland, once a model for reducing homelessness before a change of government.
- The government proposes to fund construction of 200,000 new affordable non-market housing in a decade. Even some of Canada’s banks have urged that we need four times that pace to double our supply of non-market housing, while many analysts argue we need much more than that. The federal target is far too low.
- The budget makes no provision to repair and upgrade existing non-profit housing to preserve it, nor to stop the practice of REITs and other investors who buy buildings with relatively affordable rents, evict as quickly as possible the lower-rent tenants then “reposition” the building in the market—that is, seek higher paying tenants.
- The federal budget shows a large deficit and growing debt. The government is betting that its economic measures will strengthen the economy enough to move toward a balanced budget. Canada’s last effective housing programs, in the 1970s to 1990s, ended in the 1990s as governments cut programs to reduce large deficits.