This could be the year for action on the homeless, says a long-time municipal leader who is point man on the issue for Canadian cities.
The mayors of Canada’s major cities declared homelessness a national crisis in 1998. Toronto city councillor Jack Layton estimated at the time that it would take three years to achieve federal action, he told a Calgary news conference last week.
Now the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) is talking to Ottawa almost daily about the housing crisis.
Provincial associations of municipalities are working with the government of their provinces, Layton said answering a question from John Currie, president of the Calgary Homeless Foundation.
Layton is a vice-president of the FCM and chairs its national housing policy options team. He is an urban-studies professor at the University of Toronto and recently published Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis (Penguin, 246 pages).
“This is the year,” Layton said. “Our research shows that it is absolutely essential that Canada have a national homeless policy and that we have an affordable housing policy,” he said.
The federal government left the housing business in 1993 and has been reluctant to get back in. In a prosperous decade, homeless street dwellers, park and ravine dwellers and partly housed couch surfers have been increasing.
Layton said about 100 people die every year due to homelessness in Canada. One person a week dies on the streets of Toronto.
A family is considered to be in housing crisis if it spends more than 50 per cent of its income on rent, he said. People at the bottom of the economic scale are at the most risk: The bottom 10 per cent in Ontario have seen their income fall 23 per cent as their rents have risen 49 per cent.
The problem is not insoluble. France decided it had a need to build a million affordable housing units in three years and almost made it.
Canadians are used to looking smugly at the United States, but might have to copy it. The Americans spend $20 billion a year on affordable housing, said Layton.
One-tenth of that would be close to the suggestion of spending one per cent of government outlay on housing, $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in Canada, he added.
Federal spending on housing has been partly effective, said Layton. Of $750 million announced in December, 1999, part went to upgrade existing low-rent housing and part went to provide more street workers and drop-in centres.
A breakthrough could come soon, said Layton. The federal government is talking to the FCM and the Throne Speech will come shortly after Parliament reassembles at month end. Shortly after, the budget will be tabled in the Commons.
“The next 90 to 120 days are the make-or-break time to achieve a housing policy in Canada,” he said.
The head of the Calgary Homeless Foundation said that 10-per-cent break in the cost of building houses might get the private sector interested in low-cost housing.
“The private sector isn’t sandbagging anyone.” said John Currie. “There’s just no money in it (building low-cost housing).”
If municipalities lowered some barriers to construction, provinces gave a tax break and Ottawa refunded GST, it might make a blend of breaks, he suggested.
Currie said he was pleased by Layton’s “very positive news” that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is talking to the federal government and a breakthrough on housing policy could come within three months.
