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Canada urgently needs a national housing plan – millions of Canadians are calling for one, and the United Nations has added its voice. The best national housing plan is built from the community up – a plan that identifies local housing and homelessness needs across the country, and pinpoints effective local housing and homeless initiatives that deserve support. Building from the community up allows us to identify the resources needed to support a comprehensive national housing plan – including funding, legislation, programs and services. You can help build a national housing and homelessness plan from the community up by helping to build a national housing and homelessness map of Canada. The Wellesley Institute has launched this work and you can find the map here. The Canadian housing e-map is one part of the Wellesley Institute's state of the nation's housing 2009 initiative.

According to the Vancouver Sun, new B.C. health minister Kevin Falcon doesn't "have any philosophical objection" to patients being allowed to pay for faster access to medical services in private surgery clinics (http://www.vancouversun.com/Health/Health+minister+says+private+health+clinics+okay+with+limits/1729495/story.html). I don't have a philosophical objection to it either. My objection is practical.

If we allow health care procedures to be mere market items, then level of wealth becomes one of the main factors that determines whether someone gets care or not. That partial privatization would offer all patients more choice and create a more efficient system is merely a myth. The evidence has shown, time and time again, that for-profit health care is not only more costly but also often poorer quality than not-for-profit, or public, health care. Take a look at the United States, where privatized health care has resulted in costs per person that are twice as high as in Canada. Even with more money being spent, many key health outcomes, such as life expectancy and disease-specific mortality rates, are significantly worse than they are here.

“Solutions to America's challenges are being developed every day at the grass roots – and government shouldn't be supplanting those efforts, it should be supporting those efforts.” With those stirring words, US President Barack Obama announced “a new kind of partnership between government and the non-profit sector” in a speech on Tuesday at the White House attended by 100 non-profit leaders from across the country. President Obama had earlier announced a $50 million social innovation fund to “identify and expand innovative and effective non-profits”. 

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on Monday a new investment of GBP1.5 billion (Cdn$2.87 billion) to fund 20,000 new affordable and social homes over the next two years. The investment will generate 45,000 jobs in the construction trades and related sectors, according to the PM. The new investments are on top of planned spending of GBP1.2 billion this year (Cdn$2.3 billion) by the UK government - bringing total investments in new affordable and social homes to more than Cdn$5 billion over the next two years.  “We will not walk away from people in challenging times," said the Prime Minister in a statement in the Commons yesterday. We will continue to fight for a fairer prosperity and a responsible society on the basis of our enduring values. This is not a job just for the Government but for the country as a whole.” He referred to the housing investments, part of a broader government initiative called Building Britain's Future as "a new economic and constitutional settlement". 

The Housing Network of Ontario is working with Peel-based housing and homelessness advocates to ensure that the real solutions to the housing needs of people living in Peel Region are front and centre at the Monday (June 29th) provincial government housing consultation. The Assistant Deputy Minister - Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is expected to attend the forum at 6:30pm at Terry Miller Rec Centre, 1295 Williams Parkway in Brampton.

"Housing insecurity and homelessness are sometimes less visible in the
high-growth regions of the GTA, including Peel, York and Halton," says Michael Shapcott of the Wellesley Institute, co-chair of the Housing Network of Ontario. "But there are plenty of housing problems: Homeless shelters, where they exist, are crowded; lower-income households are jammed into homes that are too small; line-ups at food banks are growing longer as more household income goes to rising housing costs and less is available for other necessities."

A Happy Pride 2009 to our friends, neighbours and the million or so people who will crowd downtown Toronto's streets (almost outside the front door of the Wellesley Institute, as it happens) for the big parade today (Sunday). The Wellesley Institute is proud to partner with many groups in the LGBTT communities in our research and policy work, and we enthusiastically endorse this year's Pride slogan: "Can't stop, won't stop"!

Canada's non-profit sector includes 69,000 employers and more than 1.2 million employees - which makes it a dynamic part of the national economic scene. The HR Council for the Voluntary and Non-Profit Sector released yesterday a five-part framework for a labour force strategy for the vital third sector. The key elements are: a deliberate, purposeful focus on doing a better job of HR management; intentional efforts to continue building an inclusive workforce; a research and development strategy that produces empirical evidence that is useful and used by the sector; broadly-based co-ordinated efforts to promote the value of work in the sector; organizations and funders commit to supporting competitive compensation, good working conditions and effective HR management.

Non-profit organizations seeking financial support are facing a large number of non-negotiable terms and conditions attached to grants from both government and charitable organizations, according to Critical Conditions, a new report from the UK's Directory of Social Change released this week. "When funding terms and conditions are non-negotiable, applicants can be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it situation," said report author Jay Kennedy. "If they refuse to sign the agreement, they could lose their funding. If they sign and ignore the terms, they may jeopardise their project, organisation and beneficiaries." The new report notes that: "Funding terms have an impact on an organisation's independence and even potentially on its sound management. The funding relationship by its nature is an unequal one, and the funder's approach can make the difference between a constructive partnership and a controlling relationship". The report confirms findings from the Wellesley Institute's reports We can't afford to do business this way; and, Canada's non-profit maze. 

Lower-income Americans are especially hard-hit by current recession and there has been an "unprecedented" increase in the number of people who are precariously housed. Those are among the grim findings in the 2009 State of the Nation's Housing report that was released today in Washington DC by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Low Income Housing Coalition and others. Some key observations: "Low income homeowners and renters are hit especially hard in the current climate... in 2007, the year for which the most recent data exists, 51% of low income renters and 43% of low income owners paid more than half their incomes for housing... altogether, 17.9 million households spent more than half of their incomes on housing, a 30% increase that is 'unprecedented'.” The Wellesley Institute is building on its current and existing housing research and policy work and will release a 'state of the nation's housing' report for Canada this summer.

Finding Home is a new (free) e-book on homelessness in Canada with 29 chapters (so far) on justice, Aboriginal people, immigrants and refugees, women, children and youth, health, and – of course – housing. A section on housing rights is being planned. The e-book includes summaries of recently completed research reports as well as the best and most policy-relevant published articles from scholarly journals. The chapters have been edited to keep them at a length of 3,000 to 9,000 words and to ensure that they are accessible to a non-specialist audience. Each chapter is a separate dowloadable PDF. The e-book is organized into themes that represent specific groups of homeless people and issues that intersect with homelessness, along with a section on research issues. The book is designed to grow over time as new chapters are added. The book is published on the Homeless Hub.