Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today.
My name is Michael Braithwaite. I'm the CEO of Blue Door, an agency that's been working for close to 40 years to take care of our most vulnerable through housing help and employment initiatives in York region.
When COVID-19 hit our sector, in order to stay safe we had to lower capacity, which meant we were serving fewer people in need. While the pandemic has hit everyone really hard, it's been especially hard on our region's most vulnerable, and we knew we had to respond. From talking with some of the seniors we support and the families, we knew that they were afraid for their health and wellness and were unsure of the future, and many of them still are.
With the help of the provincial and federal funding our region received, we were so fortunate to work with the extremely talented and hard-working team in our region, as well as our amazing community partners—one of which is 360°kids, and you'll hear from Clovis today—to quickly build solutions to house and support those in need, and we had to move fast.
One example of that, actually, is that we were able to repurpose a Parks Canada home that had been vacant for a number of years. Shortly, it will house two families with long-term, affordable and supportive housing, again, past the pandemic and into the future. As well, we were able to repurpose spaces in our current emergency housing space to regain capacity and add new supportive housing for senior men.
There is a lot to celebrate in our sector moving forward, but there's still much work ahead. A lot of people are still hanging on, but as they use up the last of their savings, they're going to have to make a choice between food and housing, a choice that no Canadian should ever have to make.
We need to work hard and invest in preventing people from experiencing homelessness with investments in income supports and building new and deeply affordable housing with supports. I say “deeply affordable”. A definition of affordable right now is 80% of market value, and that's far too high for many people experiencing homelessness.
We also must make sure that our most vulnerable have easy and quick access to health care, an important part of helping people experiencing homelessness acquire and retain housing.
Lastly, we must push forward on the need for a housing strategy for Canada's urban, rural and northern indigenous people, something that was missing from our most recent budget.
We have seen during the pandemic how quickly our sector can move if provided with the right supports in a timely manner. We saw how thousands were housed really quickly, something that normally would take us years and years. We did it quickly by acquiring hotels and being innovative, working together to make sure that people had housing.
We urge the government not to lose this momentum and to keep building on it moving forward. We're grateful to the federal government for its continued support and for its pledge to end homelessness by 2030. It's shown us the political will and has provided us with the resources to keep our most vulnerable safe for the long term.
On behalf of Blue Door, our region and our country, I will say that we're truly grateful. We're excited about the possibilities for new and affordable housing as we move towards a country where everyone has a safe place to call home, as everyone should.
Thank you.