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Mounting evidence shows that women with low incomes have acute housing needs, are at greater risk of living in unsafe and unhealthy environments, and require specific supports to achieve stable and affordable housing. This stems from the high incidence of poverty among women; one in five Canadian women live in poverty. Women who are Aboriginal, visible minorities, immigrants or refugees, disabled, senior or youth have higher levels of poverty, and therefore have more difficulties finding and affording suitable housing.

The housing crisis in Canada has been linked to the federal government's withdrawal from housing in the 1990s. The proportion of female-headed renter households paying 30% or more of their household income on housing increased from 38% to 47% between 1980 and 1995, and female-headed households comprise 45% of Canadian households with core housing need. As a result of the withdrawal of federal funding, there has been no expansion of social housing in Manitoba and a decrease in the total number of low-income rental units (...)

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For personal reasons, I take this personally. Yes, that is partly a joke, but it is, like, a bitter joke.

But I shall try to be impersonal. One bit of history I can contribute:

The Finance Department in Ottawa has a very long history - very long, as in from the 1920s/30s - of ideological opposition to social housing. Even given governments / finance ministers who were relatively open to encouraging social-housing projects, the culture of that department has usually managed to sabotage long-term social-housing planning.

One of Ottawa's main ways of sabotaging social housing has been to download responsibility for it to the provinces. All the provinces have always been disastrously bad at housing: the provinces is where social housing goes to die. Municipalities are or could be better, but they never have the money or the power.

Small groups of activists have often had localized success in getting these projects through. Interestingly, we have a history of some creative private developers who have been seriously committed to social-housing policy.

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All the provinces have always been disastrously bad at housing

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Digression, this was one thing the Rae government did right. There were 17,000 units of co-op housing in the pipe when they were defeated.

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Originally posted by jrootham:
Digression, this was one thing the Rae government did right. There were 17,000 units of co-op housing in the pipe when they were defeated.

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Sorry, but they deserve credit for their philosophical support (which was admittedly tough to maintain, with both the Tories and Liberals arguing for an end to the program) more than in the actual implementation of the jobsOntario Homes program. If the Rae government hadn't been so slow in getting the shovels in the ground, Harris wouldn't have been able to cancel more than a handful of those 17,000 units. The Rae government deliberately dragged their feet as a misguided cost savings measure (misguided because the bulk of the costs were to be amortized over the life of the mortgage, whereas most of the benefits -- jobs in construction and affordable housing unit for people in need -- would have been realized right away.

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Originally posted by jrootham:
Well, OK, they weren't perfect. But better than the alternative.

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Perhaps some babblers may recall the film "Julia" starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda, and the scenes in social housing estates where the workers are defending them from the fascists?

Before we get to the “how much” of funding, we have to look at the “how it is spent.” One thing that is continuously ignored in on-again-off-again government programs is that housing is a long term asset. Even new stuff without frills is going to lose money for the first decade or so, even if it’s rented at the “market.” But, like housing in the private market, it eventually breaks even, then makes a surplus which the private market takes as a profit and social housing uses to reduces(or even reverse) its reliance on public assistance.

How long this takes depends on what kind of social housing it is: public housing, which usually has most, if not all, of its tenants receiving assistance because they’re pretty poor, will take a long time to break even(or may never do so). Non-Profit housing, which will mix tenants able to pay a market rent(MR) with lower income tenants paying a lower rent geared to their income(RGI - the current standard is 30% of income) will break even and generate a surplus in a shorter period.. Experience over the last thirty years suggests that such mixed NP housing will break even in about 20-25 years and then will produce a surplus which can go to developing more units(at little or no public cost).

What the above means is that any realist appraisal of any of these programs has to consider how they work over a fairly long term, any programs should be designed to take account of the loss at the beginning, but making sure the later gains are re-invested, rather than just going back into general revenues.

The first modern NP program, authorized under S. 15.1 of the National Housing Act(NHA) was replaced, after only 5 years by the (NHA) 56.1 program, far too short a period for it have any measurable effect. Then rather than waiting to show how it behaved over the next 20 years or so(or even modelling how it could be expected to behave), an evaluation was done, apparently to rationalize the new program rather than to really examine the older one.(One standard for evaluation is to examine, then propose changes based on that examination).

There is a lot of Social Housing whose mortgages will be coming due over the next 20 years or so, making a lot of cash-flow from the units available. Some will be needed for up-keep on that stock as it ages, but some could be available for development of new stock. That does not mean that government programs are unnecessary, only that things are not as dire as one might think. But any new program should be much more carefully designed with the understanding that, while these programs may need substantial initial help, they can be designed so that the need for help eventually disappears and, given enough time, that earlier help can be paid back.

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Overview of Violations of the Right to Housing in Canada

i) Homelessness has Become a National Disaster in Canada There is no reliable data on the number of homeless in Canada but most experts agree that there are now at least 250,000 individuals who experience homelessness each year in Canada.1 This is only the tip of the iceberg, of course, as hundreds of thousands more double up with friends or family or live in overcrowded or inadequate housing. Homelessness in Canada has been identified as a ‘national disaster’ by the mayors of the ten largest cities in Canada. Dozens of people die on the cold streets of Canada’s cities every winter and high rates of tuberculosis, hepatitis B and HIV are now a common feature of an expanding homeless population. Women and children have been dramatically affected by the epidemic of homelessness in Canada.2 The number of single parent households using shelters in Toronto increased by more than 50 per cent between 1990 and 200 (City of Toronto 2003: 41).3 Approximately 32,000 individuals use shelters for the homeless in the City of Toronto every year,

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Homelessness in a country with more natural resources than we can pawn-off to corporate America is a national disgrace. This is the ultimate in Liberal and Conservative government incompetence in this frozen Puerto Rico. We're swimming in a sea of lumber, and there are tens of thousands of Canadian's who don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Unbelievable!. The poor in Canada have apparently become just another special interest group as far as our centre and right of centre SOB's are concerned.

[ 14 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The long term way would be to require developers to build housing that reflects the economic demographic of the municipality.

That's a long term solution and does little to address housing needs now.

No matter what the approach, I think a good part of the answer will have to come from engineers. Housing is unaffordable because we build unaffordable housing, and I think it's because we build buildings because that's the basic way we've been doing it for hundreds of years.

I'm sure there must be more efficient, more affordable models that take into account local materials and geography.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
I don't think the answer lies in any kind of central planning scenario. It has to be bottom up if it's going to work.

The long term way would be to require developers to build housing that reflects the economic demographic of the municipality.

That's a long term solution and does little to address housing needs now.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
I'm not suggesting "leaving it to the market", I'm suggesting regulating, which by looking at the new developments in my municipality, is entirely lacking.

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Ok, I suppose I just didn't fully absorb what you were saying, and I agree. The housing bubble in North America is just further evidence that when anything is left to the market, chaos tends to be result.

The skyrocketing homelessness in all BC communities is also directly linked to the vanishing affordable housing stock.

Provinces are, actually, directly and primarily responsible for housing. However, they usually dry poverty and blame the feds (a popular move for any province). The feds do have the money, but abandoned housing in the early 90s - thanks Martin - so we now have as a direct result homelessness, skyrocketing property crime, addiction and families in crisis.

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Originally posted by arborman:
There is a direct link between the elimination of affordable housing funding and the move in BC from the lowest child poverty rate in the early 90's to the highest at present.

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That's funny, Ontario has endured 50 years of political conservatism interrupted by a brief run of liberal leadership, and we've got more homeless people than B.C. and the rest of Canada combined!. At the federal level, we've enjoyed 75 years of Liberal rule and interrupted by two terms of Mulroney and Campbell. I think the level of homelessness in this country is a stinging indictment of our two old line parties both.

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When in opposition in 1990, Paul Martin said, “The housing crisis is growing at an alarming rate and the government(See Brian Mulroney's record) sits there and does nothing; it refuses to apply the urgent measures that are required to reverse this deteriorating situation. . . . Leadership must come from one source, and a national vision requires some national direction.”

Yet, as finance minister in 1996, he abolished what was left of the national housing program (created by a minority government in the 1970s). With the record surplus in 2000, he delivered a concrete plan for billions in corporate tax cuts, and vague words on building housing.

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1 in 4 children in BC live in poverty - a staggering indictment of the NDP and Liberal governments over the past 10 years here.

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And it would be higher if Statistics Canada were to include native poverty on reserves. Child poverty is high in B.C., but the issue of child poverty is nation-wide problem. If you care to know about rich nation trends, the three most western and most politically conservative developed nations tend to nurture higher child poverty overall. I wish you wouldn't blame the NDP for rising child poverty and rising abject poverty in Canada in general, arby, because it's way off the mark.

[ 15 January 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]