I know that as we look forward to having a men in supported housing program, we recognize there is an opportunity to work ourselves out of a job. I don't think emergency shelters will ever be eliminated entirely, but the difficulty is in trying to reduce that capacity for people who need it in the very short term--when they're evicted or when something like that happens.
Megan makes a very good point, that proactive investment in those outreach workers Josée Beaudin talked about would be very, very critical, for the workers to visit people. Some of those supports occur when a landlord begins to have an issue with someone who is not keeping their apartment clean and has complaints from other tenants. That is often a very easy fix for an outreach worker to make when they go to visit. And when you think about a $40,000 or $45,000 salary for an outreach worker—which, by the way, we're nowhere near, but we would love to pay a bit better wages for our staff—who goes out and does that visit, that investment in saving the person from being evicted and being put into a shelter at a much higher cost per day than their rent is a great saving.
So these supports and supported housing programs are good measure as economic investments as well as being good social practice. They also help people to have an attitudinal and relational apprenticeship. I say this because what often happens is that we underestimate the situation, thinking that everyone grows up on a level playing field, but they don't. They don't learn the same ways of interacting with people and relational things, due to their circumstances. When they arrive at adulthood and have to navigate the complex legal systems, landlord tenant systems....
Those programs exist in our community right now for supported housing for women, and the models are very successful. They exist in other places as well, and they have shown a cost savings over sheltering. So I think they would be a very wise investment federally.
The other piece is that when someone is in housing successfully, in their own space, they have a better sense of safety and a better sense of privacy and dignity, and they tend to reduce their negative behaviours. A lot of the negative behaviours we see in our shelter happen as a result of congregant living and the reaction of people to someone else's stuff happening right in front of them. If you have your own place, a lot of that's eliminated and you have a place to regroup. I look forward at the end of the day to going home and regrouping. Guys at our shelter don't have that option. So when they arrive back and something's going on, they don't sometimes have a social choice to let it be, because if something happened to their friend and they don't help them, suddenly when they need help, no one will be there for them. There's a lot of economy in social injustice. That's something we all need to be mindful of.
So housing first is a really good understanding. There's lots of research supporting the fact that when a person goes into their own housing, and it's maintained, they do indeed reduce their negative behaviours, whether it's addiction.... They use the mental health system less, which is our highest health care cost, and our justice system less.
So these things are great.