A National Disaster
Everybody needs a home, but decent, affordable housing is currently out of reach for a growing number of Canadians. A lack of affordable housing, with homelessness as its most serious consequence, compromises the health and well-being of individuals and the quality of life of communities and Canada as a whole.

Too many people, particularly children, are living in temporary shelters or sub-standard and sometimes unsafe housing. Too many people are living on the street, straining the ability of social service agencies to help them. In 2004, FCM´s Quality of Life Reporting System (QOLRS) uncovered a number of disturbing trends between 1991 and 2001 in the 20 large to midsized QOLRS communities:

• Five of the seven indicators to measure the risk of homelessness in the 20 QOL communities deteriorated;
• The proportion of renter households spending more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter in the 20 major municipalities studied increased from 35 per cent to 41 per cent;
• More than 20 per cent of renter households were paying at least 50 per cent of their income on rent, leaving them at significant risk of homelessness as insufficient funds were left for other necessities.

Trends since that time have not significantly improved. Most recently, many municipal governments have undertaken counts of their homeless populations, which have demonstrated increasing, significant incidences of homelessness in many cities.

A Long-Term Approach
Effective solutions require a long-term commitment. Shortterm commitments often suffer from a lack of coordination and adequate long-term planning, and force service providers to spend more time focusing efforts on where future money will come from, instead of building the capacity and expertise required to formulate real solutions.

Both the Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS), which recently replaced the National Homelessness Initiative (NHI) and Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI), and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation´s rehabilitation and renovation programs (RRAP) were renewed for only two years. Two years is a short timeframe in which to address challenges as complex as homelessness or to undertake the major repairs intended by RRAP.

The federal government, in collaboration with the provincial/ territorial governments and FCM, must develop a long-term national housing strategy that has the flexibility to respond to the diverse needs that exist in cities and communities across Canada. This strategy will include a number of integrated components, but because of demonstrated, pressing needs, high priority areas should be implemented in the near-term.

HOUSING FOR ALL

National Housing Strategy: Develop a long-term national housing strategy, in collaboration with the provincial/territorial governments and FCM, that will eliminate homelessness within 10 years. The following are key components of a national housing strategy:

• Rehabilitate private and social housing units to preserve existing stock by not only extending RRAP (as above), but expanding it.
• Directly address affordability problems by providing people with the income assistance they need to afford housing by working with the provincial/territorial governments to enhance the shelter component of social assistance, which would complement shelter allowances (as above).
• Encourage the creation of market rental housing by reforming the tax treatment of rental investment.
• Expand the supply of affordable housing where markets fail to produce sufficient lower cost housing.
• Develop a specific fund to address the on and off reserve affordable housing needs of aboriginal people.
• Ensure energy retrofit programs for homeowners include particular support for low-income families, which would have the considerable benefit of both reducing energy costs for tenants, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by curbing energy use.
• Continue to encourage regulatory reform as a means to ensure greater affordability, as has been done by FCM´s Affordability and Choice Today (ACT) program.