With winter fast setting in, homeless advocates across Canada are scrambling to secure shelter—however rudimentary—for the thousands of Canadians who have no home. But despite their best efforts, many will be left out in the cold.
Homelessness is on the rise in almost all Canadian cities, and those on the front lines of addressing the problem lay the blame squarely on the fact that Canada no longer has a fully-funded federal housing program.
The federal government canceled senior-level housing programs in 1993. In the years that followed, most provincial governments, with the notable exception of Quebec, followed suit by cutting funding to provincial low-income housing.
"It's getting worse absolutely everywhere," says Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe. "I could list about 10 communities where none of them have enough emergency shelters for single people, and none of them have enough shelters for families with children. And we're seeing huge, long waiting lists for affordable housing."
While there are many emergency situations across the country, Crowe cites Calgary's "rampant increase in homeless families" as one of the most serious. The city, which has experienced unprecedented prosperity in recent years, has grown too fast for its own good. Ubiquitous "help wanted" signs have drawn in workers from across the country, but with new Calgarians flooding in faster than new homes can be built, rents have skyrocketed and housing availability has dropped.
The current wait list for subsidized housing in Calgary is seven years long. It's not uncommon to hear of Calgarians getting priced out of their homes when their rents suddenly double. The homeless agency Inn from the Cold, which helps homeless families find temporary shelter, has started warning people not to move to Calgary without first arranging a place to live.
Calgary is now home to an estimated 3,436 homeless, many of them working full-time.
'Scared of Freezing'
Last week the Alberta government pledged $1 million to turn an abandoned warehouse into a temporary emergency shelter for the winter. The announcement came not a moment too soon; Calgary's largest homeless shelter has become so crowded that employees are forced to turn away dozens of homeless people every night, leaving them to fend for themselves in sub-zero temperatures.
"We have a serious problem because we're turning away upwards of 70 people a night," says Debbie Newman, Director of Programme Services at the Calgary Drop-In Centre.
"People are sleeping in stairwells, they try to get into the +15s [Calgary's downtown buildings are linked by walkways 15 feet above the ground called +15s], sneak into parkades [multistory parking garages], anywhere they can find refuge," Newman says. "When you're desperate and scared of freezing to death you'll do anything. As an agency we have always said we will not allow anyone to freeze, but we have reached a point where we have put our staff in jeopardy and we've put limitations on liability issues. We had to set limits."
Crowe says one of the results she sees from the increase in homelessness is a rise in infectious diseases, including a resurgence of the potentially deadly tuberculosis. Overcrowding in a Calgary shelter last winter led to an outbreak of Norovirus, causing 350 people to become ill.
While Canada is experiencing a strong economy, anti-poverty advocates say that low welfare rates, lack of affordable housing, and low minimum wage are all contributing to an increase in homelessness. Toronto has the largest homeless population in the country at 5,052. Of those, 3,649 live in shelters while some 818 sleep outside.
Toronto has an average of two homeless deaths per week. These, according to Crowe, result from a multitude of causes: accidents, trauma, beatings, disease, hate crimes, and hypothermia. A vigil is held once a month for those who die on the streets.
Vancouver is not faring much better. A report released by Pivot Legal Society in September said the city is on the brink of a social housing crisis and called for action from all levels of government. The Downtown Eastside legal advocacy group predicts that Vancouver's homeless population of 2,175 will triple by 2010 when the city hosts the Winter Olympics.
Win-Win?
The B.C. Liberals, the governing political party in British Columbia, have unveiled a provincial housing strategy that will provide 450 new low-income housing units across the province. But Pivot's David Eby says it is not enough, as Vancouver alone needs 800 new units per year.
Pivot estimates that the homelessness in British Columbia costs taxpayers roughly $51 million a year—mostly in policing and healthcare costs—leading Eby to believe the government would actually save money by providing ample affordable housing. He cites New York as a city that has "done a really good job" of dealing with homelessness. New York has built 21,000 new housing units over the last five years.
"They have accepted the business case that it's cheaper to house people than it is to have people in shelters or on the street," says Eby. "They've accepted that model and they're experiencing returns from looking after their most vulnerable."
The Salvation Army, which operates 44 percent of the shelter beds throughout British Columbia, provides about 500 beds in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside during the winter and 325 year-round.
In Victoria, which has approximately 700 homeless and not enough shelter beds to go around, the homeless situation prompted renewed concern recently when a U.S. company cancelled a conference in the city, citing too many panhandlers and street people as the reason.
British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell has said his government will increase welfare rates in the February budget. The welfare shelter rate in British Columbia, at $325 CAD ($288 USD) a month for a single person, has not been increased in 12 years.
Surveys show that Aboriginal people are disproportionately represented among Canada's homeless population and are more likely to be "street homeless" than ones living in shelters. In Winnipeg, Aboriginals comprise as high as an estimated 70 percent of the homeless population. The Manitoba Urban Native Housing Association, which has over 2,500 units throughout Manitoba, has 4,000 families wait listed.
"You could almost call it a form of racism internally in the country with the high proportion of Aboriginal people and refugees being stuck in homelessness," says Crowe.
It was Crowe's group, the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, which brought homelessness to the political forefront in Canada in 1998, when it issued a declaration that homelessness was a national disaster. In the years since, the United Nations has regularly cited Canada in its status reports as not doing enough for its homeless citizens, in particular singling out the situation for Aboriginals, families, and children.
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