Thank you.
Yes, we are one of the only countries without a national housing policy, which means people die on our streets every day. Two to four people die every week in the city of Toronto as a direct result of homelessness. There are millions of people who are precariously housed and at risk of becoming homeless at any time.
In terms of SCPI, some people would call the services it has provided a band-aid, but I would call them a lifesaver. It's more like a compress than a band-aid, because there's no other place for people to go. We would rather see a national housing strategy and not need to have millions of dollars going into services that are just making life a little more comfortable for people and keeping them warm. But 9,000 beds in transitional housing were created in the first few years of the program. Programs that were funded included psychosocial services, emergency health addiction services, education, and life skills. Those are things that will help people maintain housing once they're able to achieve it.
Dri, for example, is a former tent city resident who has now been housed for four years as a direct result of a rent supplement program. Those are the kinds of things that are really important. We spend $5,000 easily to keep a family in a shelter for a month. We spend $1,000 to $2,000 to keep a single person in a shelter for a month. A few hundred dollars in a rent supplement program or providing social housing would eliminate those high costs.