ENP - Toronto is a project of the Centre for Social Innovation and B.C.-based Enterprising Non-Profits.
Social Enterprises are businesses operated by non-profits, with the dual puprose of generating income by selling a product or service in the marketplace and creating a social, environmental or cultural value.
ENP-Toronto is a partnership of 12 foundations and business organizations that promotes and supports social enterprise development and growth as a means to build strong non-profit organizations and healthier communities.
The first orientation session drew a capacity crowd of 42 participants from a wide variety of organizations. To learn more, or sign up to attend a future orientation session - log onto the ENP-Toronto web site.
]]>ENP - Toronto is a project of the Centre for Social Innovation and B.C.-based Enterprising Non-Profits.
Social Enterprises are businesses operated by non-profits, with the dual puprose of generating income by selling a product or service in the marketplace and creating a social, environmental or cultural value.
ENP-Toronto is a partnership of 12 foundations and business organizations that promotes and supports social enterprise development and growth as a means to build strong non-profit organizations and healthier communities.
The first orientation session drew a capacity crowd of 42 participants from a wide variety of organizations. To learn more, or sign up to attend a future orientation session - log onto the ENP-Toronto web site.
]]>Mark your calendars and plan to attend this important event on July 24:
The Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the Cities Centre, University of Toronto will launch its report, Better Off in a Shelter? A Year of Homelessness and Housing for Immigrant, Non-Status, and Canadian-born Mothers. The study—the first of its kind in Canada—followed 91 mothers in homeless shelters over one year as they coped with homelessness and sought new homes for their families. The study’s results reveal the complex causes and effects of homelessness for families with children, and the ways in which these differ between women who are Canadian-born, immigrant women with status, and migrant women without status.
10:00am: Press Conference
]]>Mark your calendars and plan to attend this important event on July 24:
The Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the Cities Centre, University of Toronto will launch its report, Better Off in a Shelter? A Year of Homelessness and Housing for Immigrant, Non-Status, and Canadian-born Mothers. The study—the first of its kind in Canada—followed 91 mothers in homeless shelters over one year as they coped with homelessness and sought new homes for their families. The study’s results reveal the complex causes and effects of homelessness for families with children, and the ways in which these differ between women who are Canadian-born, immigrant women with status, and migrant women without status.
10:00am: Press Conference
11:00 am – 1:00 pm: Lunch & Learn Panel
Women who participated in the study will be present to speak about the findings. The Lunch and Learn Panel will also include: This discussion will be of interest to service providers, activists, researchers, policy makers, and survivors of homelessness. Lunch will be served. This event is co-sponsored by Cities Centre, YWCA Toronto, and the Wellesley Institute. Space is limited! Please register by July 18. To register, please contact: Sheila Batacharya, CUCS, s.batacharya@utoronto.ca, by July 18.
For information, please contact:
Emily Paradis, Research Manager, CUCS at Cities Centre, 416-978-1345, e.paradis@utoronto.ca
Raine Liliefeldt, Marketing and Media Coordinator, YWCA Toronto, 416 961 8100 x 326 rliliefeldt@ywcatoronto.org
For a map to YWCA Toronto, 80 Woodlawn E., click here.
It is certainly vital that there is widespread community discussion of the kinds of indicators needed to adequately reflect the incredible diversity and challenges of current populations, and help shape planning and monitor progress on reducing health disparities, reducing poverty, enhancing the social resilience of communities, enhancing health opportunities and outcomes for particular disadvantaged populations and other key objectives. Experience has not always been productive: community service providers have to report an enormous amount of data to government and other funders, and the data has seldom been used to actually monitor progress and guide planning. In policy development terms, the search for perfect data and indicators can delay actually moving on key areas where there is clear consensus. Nonetheless, this is a vital issue: communities, service providers and funders all want to be able to assess what kinds of interventions work most effectively and to know that their activities are making a difference. This roundtable provides useful material for this key challenge.
]]>“Housing is an internally-protected right,” notes the OHRC. The international right to adequate housing was first set out in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights 60 years ago (and it was a Canadian, John Humphrey, who played a key role in preparing that document). The human right to adequate housing is set out in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – ratified by Canada – along with dozens of other covenants, treaties and other legal instruments (most of which Canada has also ratified).
So, if housing is a fundamental human right, and governments have accepted that they have an obligation to help to realize that right when they ratify international legal agreements, then why is there widespread and growing housing insecurity and homelessness in Ontario and across Canada?
The problem is the disconnect between housing rights and housing realities – and that’s what the Ontario Human Rights Commission is seeking to bridge. Politicians recognize the right to housing when they sign international documents, but then ignore those rights when they craft domestic policies. The widespread cuts to housing funding, gutting of programs and downloading of housing from federal to provincial and then municipal governments not only helped to trigger widespread housing insecurity, but it is also a fundamental violation of the basic international standards in housing rights. In recent years, a series of United Nations’ decisions have condemned Canada for falling short in its obligations.
The OHRC report is not just a grand statement of values, but includes practical actions that seek to end discrimination in housing, poverty, lack of funding and services and other barriers that prevent hundreds of thousands of Ontario households from realizing their right to an adequate, affordable home.
The Wellesley Institute has been calling for a rights-based approach to housing strategy since the release of our “Blueprint to End Homelessness in Toronto” in 2006. Affordable and adequate housing is not only a practical necessity, but it is one of the most important determinants of health. Poor housing leads directly to poor health and premature death. Recognizing housing as a fundamental human right provides a solid foundation for a local, provincial and national housing strategy that is comprehensive and fully-funded.
Last fall, the Wellesley Institute helped to co-ordinate the civil society portion of the Canadian fact-finding mission of Miloon Kothari, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. Several hundred people attended a public forum with Mr. Kothari and heard about housing challenges, and housing solutions.
In our community-based research, we work with a variety of groups to help them to tell important stories and propose robust solutions. OHRC Chief Commission Barbara Hall cited “We are Neighbours”, a research study by the Dream Team supported by the Wellesley Institute, in her comments to launch the “Right at Home” report.
In late June, the Wellesley Institute co-sponsored a major forum on inclusionary zoning with the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre. In that forum, planning experts set out the rationale for a set of municipal planning rules that would insure that low, moderate and middle-income households can find a home in neighbourhoods throughout Toronto.
The OHRC housing rights report comes with a commitment from Chief Commissioner Hall that the commission will meet with provincial politicians and take other steps to have its recommended actions adopted. The OHRC has other on-line resources on housing rights.
Statistics Canada has reported that the cost of shelter is the single biggest expense for Canadian households (based on median expenditure per household), which means that affordable housing is not only top of mind for most people, but should be of more importance to politicians.
]]>Toronto Community Housing Company, the city's housing agency, faces the tough job of managing the biggest housing portfolio in the country (the second largest in North America) with precious little support from senior levels of government. TCHC is forced to cannibalize its portfolio by selling-off bits and pieces of its land and housing in order to finance the long over-due redevelopment. If senior levels of government (especially the negligent federal government) paid their fair share, then TCHC would have much more flexibility with the redevelopment plans and could more effectively address the social and economic issues facing its almost 60,000 tenant households.
]]>Toronto Community Housing Company, the city's housing agency, faces the tough job of managing the biggest housing portfolio in the country (the second largest in North America) with precious little support from senior levels of government. TCHC is forced to cannibalize its portfolio by selling-off bits and pieces of its land and housing in order to finance the long over-due redevelopment. If senior levels of government (especially the negligent federal government) paid their fair share, then TCHC would have much more flexibility with the redevelopment plans and could more effectively address the social and economic issues facing its almost 60,000 tenant households.
A pattern is being followed throughout North America with public housing redevelopments. Typically, they are converted from projects housing mostly low-income households to mixed-income communities. In the United States, the redevelopment almost always leads to fewer subsidized units - a tragic erosion of affordable housing at a time when more affordable homes are urgently needed, not less.
All of this raises a profound question: Are mixed-income communities better than single-income neighbourhoods?
Mixed-income social housing communities have been viewed as a big success, especially after the development of Toronto's St. Lawrence neighbourhood three decades ago.
Public housing projects (large-scale government-owned and government-managed that typically housed low-income households)were built in large numbers in Toronto, Canada and throughout the United States in the first two decades after the second world war. They fell out of favour by the late 1960s and, in Canada, were replaced with a new model of affordable housing when the National Housing Act was amended in 1973 to bring in Canada's highly successful national housing program.
From 1973 to 1993, more than half a million good quality, affordable homes in mixed-income developments were built throughout the country, and they continue provide good homes to millions of Canadians.
On the face of it, mixed-income neighbourhoods are better, and more inclusive, than single-income (low-income) neighbourhoods.
But a deeper question remains: Will the low-income households who now live in Regent Park be better off when they move back into their redeveloped neighbourhood and live next to higher-income households?
Some proponents of mixed-income neighbourhoods argue that the mere proximity of higher-income people living next to lower-income people offers a better role-model and somehow inspires poor people to work harder and get ahead in life. But the roots of poverty are not simply in personal characteristics, but structural issues (such as employment, education and income assistance programs).
Housing experts in North America and Europe are beginning to realize that while mixing incomes are necessary to create better neighbourhoods, income-mixing alone is not sufficient to address the fundamental social and economic issues that create and perpetuate poverty.
Researchers are working with residents in Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood on a long-term study to test the impact of income-mixing on health and well-being.
]]>
Human rights function as both a moral ideal and as a “deeply pragmatic political tool” at both the international and national levels, to paraphrase Professor Conor Gearty, the Director of the London School of Economics Centre for the Study of Human Rights. In other words, the rights-based approach to housing allows us to set realistic goals and at the same time implement practical and effective solutions.
Last fall, the Wellesley Institute sponsored a community forum on the international right to adequate housing with Miloon Kothari, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, who was on an official fact-finding mission to Canada. OHRC Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall was a guest speaker at that forum, and in her comments she made a strong link between the international right to adequate housing guaranteed in dozens of treaties, covenants and other legal instruments, and the realities of massive and growing housing insecurity in Toronto and throughout Ontario.
]]>Human rights function as both a moral ideal and as a “deeply pragmatic political tool” at both the international and national levels, to paraphrase Professor Conor Gearty, the Director of the London School of Economics Centre for the Study of Human Rights. In other words, the rights-based approach to housing allows us to set realistic goals and at the same time implement practical and effective solutions.
Last fall, the Wellesley Institute sponsored a community forum on the international right to adequate housing with Miloon Kothari, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, who was on an official fact-finding mission to Canada. OHRC Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall was a guest speaker at that forum, and in her comments she made a strong link between the international right to adequate housing guaranteed in dozens of treaties, covenants and other legal instruments, and the realities of massive and growing housing insecurity in Toronto and throughout Ontario.
The international human right to adequate housing was first recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in December of 1948 (this year is the 60th anniversary of this important and historic document). It was a Canadian, John Humphrey, who played a key role in the development of the universal declaration.
The right to adequate housing is set out in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and a great many other international legal instruments – almost all of which Canada has ratified. The international right to housing has been set out in great detail, but it has never been explicitly incorporated into Canadian domestic law. There are private member’s bills before the national Parliament and the Ontario Legislature to achieve this. In the meantime, legal experts believe that the international right to housing can be “read into” the “right to life” as set out in s7 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Last summer, in a Canadian first for an official human rights commission, the OHRC held a province-wide consultation on the right to housing. The commission heard plenty of horror stories about how the lack of affordable and safe housing is damaging the health and lives of Ontarians. It also received plenty of practical suggestions to bring Ontario laws, programs and policies – everything from the shelter allowance rate for social assistance recipients to regulations affecting social housing – in line with international standards for housing rights.
The OHRC doesn’t have the power to order the Ontario government to make changes, but it has a powerful role assigned by the Legislature.
The practical debate about how to bring funding and practices in Ontario up to international housing rights standards is long overdue. The release of the OHRC report on Tuesday will provide a major boost for that debate.
]]>Two principal contributors – right-wing ex-politicians Mike Harris (former premier of Ontario) and Preston Manning – promise to launch "a national dialogue and understanding of urban issues" as part of their "Strong and Free Canada" (their capitals) initiative.
The "Fraser Alert" on Toronto was released in late June. It lacks the usual bombastic rhetoric that emanates from the business-backed organization that proudly proclaims its faith in uncontrolled, unregulated and undemocratic private markets.
The headline "Is Toronto in decline?" has an uncharacteristically equivocal question mark, something we don’t expect from an outfit that is almost always loud and firm in its opinions.
The increasingly troubling socio-economic landscape in Toronto and the surrounding metropolitan region has been well documented in previous studies, including:
]]>Two principal contributors – right-wing ex-politicians Mike Harris (former premier of Ontario) and Preston Manning – promise to launch "a national dialogue and understanding of urban issues" as part of their "Strong and Free Canada" (their capitals) initiative.
The "Fraser Alert" on Toronto was released in late June. It lacks the usual bombastic rhetoric that emanates from the business-backed organization that proudly proclaims its faith in uncontrolled, unregulated and undemocratic private markets.
The headline "Is Toronto in decline?" has an uncharacteristically equivocal question mark, something we don’t expect from an outfit that is almost always loud and firm in its opinions.
The increasingly troubling socio-economic landscape in Toronto and the surrounding metropolitan region has been well documented in previous studies, including:
From a community perspective, a significant amount of research funded by the Wellesley Institute, along with many of our partners in the Toronto Neighbourhoods Research Network and the Toronto Community-Based Research Network provide many critical details that are necessary to inform any debate.
The Growing Gap initiative provides thorough and reasoned stats and analysis on who’s winning, and who is losing, in today’s economy.
The Fraser urban edifice is built on trends in two simple sets of numbers: A survey of median (statistical middle) incomes in Toronto; and a quick review of occupations.
That’s all that is on offer from the Fraser Institute.
Somehow, Messrs Harris and Manning, and their research associates, managed to miss the single biggest and most alarming trend: Growing poverty and income inequality in the GTA.
TD Economics called poverty "among the most complex challenges confronted in the GTA. This issue is also among the most pressing," (piii). Growing poverty and income inequality gets thorough treatment in both the CUCS and UWGT reports.
A deeply troubling table in the CUCS report notes the strong link between income and race: Toronto’s "whitest" neighbourhoods saw the biggest income gains over the past three decades; while black, Chinese and South Asian neighbourhoods have seen the biggest decline in average incomes.
"We hope that this evidence-based report will be a catalyst for action and second, that we can work together – with the community sector and all three orders of government to – overcome the systemic issues of poverty in Canada’s largest city," wrote UWGT President and CEO Frances Lankin in the Losing Ground report.
Evidence is the critical fuel for any informed policy debate, and that’s just what the Fraser Institute ignores.
You’d expect that the pro-market organization like the Fraser would mention that, during the period when Toronto’s median income was not growing as fast as other Canadian municipalities, the Toronto CMA's Gross Domestic Product (one conventional market measure) was bustling along at an average annual increase of about 2.5%, according to TD Economics.
So why, if the economy was doing so well, weren’t median incomes (and, especially, incomes in the middle, moderate and low-end) also increasing at a nice, brisk pace? Don’t Messers Harris and Manning believe, along with their Fraser Institute colleagues, that a rising tide lifts all boats?
Two important clues are offered in the TD Economics Report (and also observed in numerous other research studies):
First, it notes that government spending as a share of the economy has been dropping sharply in recent years. This was the deliberate policy of the Harris government (and other governments federal and provincial, for that matter): Cut spending and then hand out the proceeds in the form of tax cuts. The spending cuts for income assistance programs and other social spending (such as housing, education and health) primarily hurt lower-income people, while the tax cuts offer the biggest benefits to higher-income people and profitable corporations. Cutting government spending makes income inequality grow even worse.
Governments in Canada, and around the world, have traditionally played a key, and democratic role, in addressing market failures and ensuring that people have access to an adequate standard of living (an affordable home, decent food, medicine and health care, good child care, a good education, safe and secure neighbourhoods, social inclusion, a healthy environment, effective transportation and other necessities).
Reducing the ability of governments to take practical and effective actions on behalf of all the people increases income and social inequality.
Second, TD Economics notes a major shift in employment in the GTA. Manufacturing has been hard hit in recent years (something confirmed almost daily in the headlines). Most job gains in Toronto have been in the relatively lower-paying service sector – adding to the troubling trend on incomes.
A good debate requires sound evidence and reasoned analysis, neither of which is in evidence in the first Fraser Institute urban alert.
]]>About 400 tenants in the McNab Park district of Saskatoon face losing their homes as a property developer attempts to cash in on the demand for higher-priced housing. Next door in the Province of Alberta, the oil-fed economic boom has generated a huge amount of housing insecurity, and massive and growing homelessness. Even Toronto, which has seen a number of years of solid - if not spectacular - economic growth until recently, has experienced the downside of good times as poverty and income inequality has grown.
]]>About 400 tenants in the McNab Park district of Saskatoon face losing their homes as a property developer attempts to cash in on the demand for higher-priced housing. Next door in the Province of Alberta, the oil-fed economic boom has generated a huge amount of housing insecurity, and massive and growing homelessness. Even Toronto, which has seen a number of years of solid - if not spectacular - economic growth until recently, has experienced the downside of good times as poverty and income inequality has grown.
The current response in Saskatoon, based on a quote from senior city planner Allan Wallace, is to throw up their collective hands in dismay and brace for the economic storm. "We think we've learned from Alberta's experience before us,” Wallace is quoted as saying. “But what we've learned is that it's impossible to keep up. You're basically reacting continuously.”
Wrong - as was clearly demonstrated last Thursday, when the Wellesley Institute and the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto brought together more than 120 municipal planners and other community leaders for our inclusionary zoning forum. The three policy experts that came up from the United States - David Rusk from Washington, DC; Sheila Dillon from Boston; and Adam Gross from Chicago - all agreed that economic good times are exactly the right time to start effective land use planning to make sure that there is room for everyone, not just the dwindling numbers who can afford the skyrocketing market cost of housing.
More details on the forum, and the next steps, will be posted shortly on the Wellesley Institute web site.
]]>Further information on Health Providers Against Poverty’s research, advocacy and education activities can be found on its web site.
]]>Further information on Health Providers Against Poverty’s research, advocacy and education activities can be found on its web site.
]]>Prevailing themes in the discussions were the importance of comprehensive coordinated polices across social, economic, education, health and other key spheres that address SDoH, the need for governments to develop far better cross-sectoral collaboration and to get beyond departmental and jurisdictional silos, simpler clearer language to promote SDoH, and building on the many community-based initiatives that take broad SDoH approaches.
Download the full consultation report, or for more information on the Social Determinants of Health visit our collection of the WHO's SDoH Knowledge Networks.
]]>The numbers underline a deep, persistent and growing affordability gap between the rents charged in private markets (where most low, moderate and middle-income Canadians live) and renter household incomes.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released its spring rental market report today and the numbers show that private rental markets are failing to deliver the homes that Canadians so desperately need.
On all the numbers that count, it’s bad news for the millions of Canadians who rent their homes:
]]>The numbers underline a deep, persistent and growing affordability gap between the rents charged in private markets (where most low, moderate and middle-income Canadians live) and renter household incomes.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released its spring rental market report today and the numbers show that private rental markets are failing to deliver the homes that Canadians so desperately need.
On all the numbers that count, it’s bad news for the millions of Canadians who rent their homes:
The rental market figures come on top of Statistics Canada data released yesterday which noted that the nation-wide affordable housing crisis is growing worse; and other data released by Statistics Canada on May 1st which reported that households incomes were stagnant or declining in most parts of Canada, even as income inequality continues to be deep and persistent.
Saskatoon set the national record for the biggest annual jump in rents – a blistering 21.3% in just one year (that’s more than 12 times the rate of inflation!).
Rents in Ontario grew by 1.6% in 2007, which is about even with inflation, and rents in Toronto grew by 1.2% - just under the inflation rate.
The housing affordability gap – the difference between actual incomes and the incomes required to afford a private rental unit – is growing. And, as the affordability gap grows, renter households have less money to pay for other necessities such as energy, food, medicine, transportation and clothing.
The average private market rent for a typical, two-bedroom rental unit is $782. A renter household needs an annual income of $31,280 to afford that rent (based on the accepted standard of 30% of income towards shelter).
That’s about $2,000 higher than the median (or middle) renter household income for Canada, which means that not only are low and moderate-income households being squeezed out of the rental market, but even middle-income households are finding it tough to secure an affordable place to call home.
The rental affordability gap in Ontario is about $7,000 annually, based on the new CMHC numbers. And the rental affordability gap for Toronto is more than $10,000 – which helps to explain the continuing near-record number of economic evictions in that city (more than 30,000 renter households face eviction annually in Toronto).
In the latest numbers, Calgary has eclipsed Toronto for the highest rents in the country. But a higher median renter household income in Calgary means that the affordability gap is about $7,000 – less than Toronto.
The CMHC spring rental survey only measures part of Canada’s rental market. Some renters live in rented condominiums or other forms of ownership housing (recent surveys have confirmed that rents in rented condos are higher than the private rental market, and the vacancy rates are lower) and others live in the rest of the so-called “secondary” rental market, which includes accessory suites and other types of housing that is often illegal, cramped and in many cases doesn’t meet minimum housing standards.
Canada has a small social housing sector – about five per cent of all homes are in non-profit and co-operative housing, including municipal and government-owned housing projects. Some, but not all, of these units are subsidized.
Most low and moderate-income households, and many middle-income, are required to find a home in the private rental markets across the country. The rapid erosion of affordability in the private ownership markets (see the June 4, 2008, backgrounder from the Wellesley Institute: “Staggering one-in-four Canadian households in affordability squeeze”) is putting increasing pressure on the private rental “universe”, even as the overall number of units is shrinking.
In the words of CMHC as it released today’s rental reports:
“The rising gap between the cost of home ownership and renting also kept demand strong for rental accommodation.”
The federal government made massive funding cuts, dismantled and downloaded national affordable and rental housing programs in the 1990s, leaving Canada as the only major country in the world without a national housing strategy.
A preliminary report to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council in March of 2008 documented Canada’s violations of international housing rights and practices and called on the federal government to initiate a new national housing strategy.
Finding Room: Policy Options for a Canadian Rental Housing Strategy, co-edited by David Hulchanski and Michael Shapcott, brings together housing experts from a variety of sectors (including social housing, private sector and academics) and is recognized as the leading text on rental housing issues in Canada
]]>New data released today by Statistics Canada confirms that the cost of housing – rental and ownership – has been rising faster than the rate of inflation, and has been rising faster than household incomes
That translates into a nation-wide affordable housing crisis for renters and owners, which the StatsCan numbers confirm has grown worse in the five years leading up to the 2006 Census.
Behind the figures is the terrible reality that millions of Canadians don’t have enough money to pay their rent, or mortgage payments, and also cover other necessities such as growing energy costs, medicine, food, transportation, clothing and other basics.
]]>New data released today by Statistics Canada confirms that the cost of housing – rental and ownership – has been rising faster than the rate of inflation, and has been rising faster than household incomes
That translates into a nation-wide affordable housing crisis for renters and owners, which the StatsCan numbers confirm has grown worse in the five years leading up to the 2006 Census.
Behind the figures is the terrible reality that millions of Canadians don’t have enough money to pay their rent, or mortgage payments, and also cover other necessities such as growing energy costs, medicine, food, transportation, clothing and other basics.
In most parts of Canada, renters have households incomes that are about half (or less) of the income of owners. The affordability crisis is biting deepest among tenants, with more than 40% of all renters trapped in the affordability squeeze.
This means that the lowest-income Canadians are facing the worst affordability problems.
More Canadian households have moved into ownership in recent years. But the latest StatsCan numbers report that affordability problems are growing faster among owners than renters.
The most recent ownership affordability report from RBC Economics (March 2008) reports: “Nation-wide housing affordability deteriorated in every consecutive quarter throughout 2007 to end up at its most unaffordable level since the housing bubble peaked in 1990.”
So, the ownership market is offering no relief for tenants ensnared in their own affordability woes, and has trapped a number of new owners between rapidly rising costs and stagnant incomes.
The StatsCan research shows that Ontario has the highest shelter costs in Canada for owners and renters, and the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area has the highest number of households caught in the affordability squeeze.
One-of-every-three Torontonians have been forced into the danger zone.
There has been a near-record amount of new housing (mostly ownership) in most parts of Canada in recent years, but the Statistics Canada report confirms that a growing number of Canadians are literally being priced out of both the ownership and rental markets.
With the U.S. economy already in a massive downward slide triggered by an affordable housing crisis in that country, the latest numbers from Canada show that there increasingly desperate conditions facing households throughout the country.
Before the massive housing cuts and downloading in the 1990s, governments (federal and provincial) realized that the private markets for ownership and rental housing couldn’t meet the housing needs of all Canadians, and they stepped in with strategic affordable housing investments.
The patchwork of funding and programs at the federal level, and in Ontario and Toronto, that has emerged in recent years is badly fraying. The three major national housing and homelessness programs (the federal homelessness strategy, the federal housing rehabilitation program and the federal affordable housing initiative) are all due to expire this year, and the federal government has made no announcements about new housing investments.
The latest Ontario budget calls for a 6% cut in spending at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing at a time when a growing number of Ontarians are facing a crippling affordability crisis in their housing costs (both ownership and rental).
In recent years, a growing number of business organizations have noted that affordable housing is one of the most important foundations to a strong and competitive economy. TD Economics reported in 2003:
Housing is a necessity of life. Yet, after ten years of economic expansion, one in five households in Canada is still unable to afford acceptable shelter – a strikingly high number, especially in view of the country’s ranking well atop the United Nations human-development survey. What’s more, the lack of affordable housing is a problem confronting communities right across the nation – from large urban centres to smaller, less-populated areas. As such, it is steadily gaining recognition as one of Canada’s most pressing public-policy issues…”
“We are used to thinking of affordable housing as both a social and a health issue. This is not altogether surprising, given the fact that many social housing tenants receive their main source of income from government transfer payments. As well, in study after study, researchers have shown that a strong correlation exists between neighbourhoods with poor quality housing and lower health outcomes. However, working to find solutions to the problem of affordable housing is also smart economic policy. An inadequate supply of housing can be a major impediment to business investment and growth, and can influence immigrants’ choices of where to locate.”
In the five years since TD Economics wrote those words, the number of Canadian households trapped in the affordability squeeze has jumped from one-in-five to one-in-four.
]]>First, the Liberals…
Earlier today, the Liberal Urban Communities Caucus released a powerful report condemning the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, and calling for strong action.
Eighteen years ago, almost to the day, the National Liberal Caucus Task Force on Housing released a powerful report that condemned the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, and called for strong action.
]]>First, the Liberals…
Earlier today, the Liberal Urban Communities Caucus released a powerful report condemning the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, and calling for strong action.
Eighteen years ago, almost to the day, the National Liberal Caucus Task Force on Housing released a powerful report that condemned the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, and called for strong action.
Liberal Urban Communities Caucus (May 28, 2008): “Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told Canadian municipal leaders in the clearest terms not to expect any help for any of their problems from the federal government. With a shrug of his shoulders, the Prime Minister has abandoned Canadian cities. We believe this lack of leadership from the current federal government will cause serious harm to the Canadian economy and the lives of all Canadians.”
National Liberal Caucus Task Force on Housing (May 14, 1990): “The federal government has abandoned its responsibilities with regard to housing problems. The housing crisis is growing at an alarming rate and the government sits there and does nothing; it refuses to apply the urgent measures that are required to reverse this deteriorating situation… The federal government’s role would be that of a partner working with other levels of government, and private and public housing groups. But leadership must come from one source; and a national vision requires some national direction.”
While the two reports strike similar tones even though they are eighteen years apart, the specific recommendations are somewhat different.
The Liberals in opposition in 1990 were a bit more bold in recommending new investments (for instance, in 1990, the Liberals called for the funding of 5,000 new co-op homes annually even as the Conservative government was shutting down the national affordable housing program).
The Liberals in opposition in 2008 don’t make a strong pitch for new investment. Instead, they call for lots more consultation (such as annual meetings between the federal cabinet and municipal leaders) and “steady-as-she-goes” spending (such as “maintain funding for housing” even as the Liberals condemn the Conservatives for not making adequate investments).
Why the dampening down of recommendations, even as the passion remains strong? The Liberals in government from 1993 to 2006 had a great deal of difficulty in meeting the promises that they set out in their 1990 task force report. They failed to restore the slashed investments in affordable housing for which they condemned the Conservative government and they failed to make the new investments (such as the promised 5,000 new co-op homes annually).
In the 1996 federal budget, delivered by then-Finance Minister Paul Martin, the Liberal government announced plans to download most of the federal housing programs to the provinces and territories, which left Canada as the only major country in the world without a national housing strategy. In 1998, the Liberal government “commercialized” Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation – the federal government’s national housing agency – with radical changes to the National Housing Act.
After the mayors of Canada’s biggest cities declared homelessness a “national disaster” in 1998, the Liberals announced a series of bits and pieces – some money for homelessness here, some money for housing rehabilitation there.
Finally, in 2001, the feds signed the Affordable Housing Framework Agreement with the provinces and territories. Under this deal, as it evolved, the federal Liberal government agreed to put $1 billion over five years into new affordable homes and the provinces and territories were supposed to match that funding for a total of $2 billion nation-wide. Not enough, but a very good start.
Unfortunately, the 2001 agreement was so clumsy that in large parts of the country (including Ontario and much of Atlantic Canada and parts of the west) very little new housing was built.
The Wellesley Institute’s National Housing Report Card of 2008 charts the dollars that did, and all too often, didn’t flow under that agreement.
Now, comparing the Conservatives of 1990 with those of today…
The Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, elected in 1984, slashed national affordable housing spending – cutting almost $2 billion in housing dollars during its ten years in office. In 1993, the Conservative government (then under Prime Minister Kim Campbell) delivered the final blow by cancelling all new funding for affordable housing. To be blunt, they pretty much stripped the cupboard bare, leaving only funding for projects that had already been built.
The Conservative government of Stephen Harper, elected in 2006, announced that it would allocate $1.4 billion in affordable housing dollars authorized by Parliament in 2005 (a good move by the government, but a bit of a surprise since the Conservatives, in opposition at the time, had voted in 2005 against the housing spending). Late in 2006, the Conservatives announced that they would extend (but not expand) federal homelessness and housing repair programs for two years.
All three pots of money are due to expire this year, so if the Conservatives don’t renew, extend and enhance the three programs, then hundreds of street-level services for homeless people in 61 communities across Canada will skid to a halt, much-needed transitional and affordable housing won’t get built and rundown housing won’t be restored.
National and local housing groups, municipalities, Aboriginal groups, business organizations, provinces and territories, faith communities and many others have all been calling for housing action.
For Parliamentary observers, these are interesting times. The New Democratic Party and the Parti Quebecois have been long-time and consistent advocates for increased investment and a new national housing strategy. Now, the Liberal Party has added its voice. Three of the four political parties in the Commons – a strong majority – are calling for housing action.
All eyes are on the government of Stephen Harper.
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