Thank you very much for inviting us.
I want you to know that Citywide Housing Coalition is a volunteer organization, and unfortunately, with only five days' notice, we were unable to submit a written brief with sources and references. My presentation today is largely anecdotal and assumes that you understand, by now, the circular connection between poverty and homelessness.
We recognize that there are many causes of increased poverty in Canada. Changes to the employment insurance program and the cancellation of the Canada assistance plan, to name two, have critically reduced incomes among the poorest people in our country. But with only seven minutes, we decided to focus our presentation on one aspect of a federal plan to reduce poverty: the federal government's role in providing affordable housing.
While you're staying in Vancouver, we hope you will have time to see the real Vancouver, the Vancouver that the 2010 Olympics cannot avoid, where thousands of people sleep nightly on our streets, not only in the downtown east side but in every neighbourhood in every part of the city and in every surrounding municipality.
The top two causes of Vancouver's explosion of homelessness are the rise of the condominium industry and the end of a permanent national social housing construction program. The greater profit of building condominiums not only ended new rental housing construction, it caused the demolition or conversion of thousands of units of existing rental housing, particularly rooming houses and residential hotels, the last housing for the poorest people.
In 1992 and 1993, at the height of the condominium construction boom in Vancouver, two successive federal governments ended our national social housing construction programs. Today, it's clear that those decisions did not save us money but instead resulted in the eventual spending of billions of tax dollars on homelessness, which is, of course, the consequence of an inadequate supply of affordable housing.
It is estimated that 80% of Vancouver's homeless people suffer from mental illness. Many people blame the policy of deinstitutionalization and demand that Riverview, which was our regional psychiatric institution, be fully reopened. However, while 80% of homeless people may well be mentally ill, very few have ever spent time in Riverview. Because the stress of homelessness triggers mental illness in many people, we are actually creating mental illness with our social policies. Not only is homelessness a gateway to mental illness and addiction, but homelessness, or being at risk of being homeless, because your housing is unsafe, unhealthy, impermanent, overcrowded, or unaffordable, or all of those, is a direct cause of a range of costly, long-lasting, societal problems that exacerbate the effects of poverty.
The purpose of a city is to provide a place for people to live and work. The end of permanent federal housing programs profoundly affected our ability to plan our cities and create economically mixed neighbourhoods. Before 1993 we had a social housing construction industry in this city. There were local architects, developers, and contractors whose expertise provided local employment opportunities, and there was a backlog of social housing project proposals. These were real public-private partnerships that created internationally awarded buildings and communities. When the annual proposal calls ended, we lost the experts, the potential projects waiting to be approved, the actual homes and local jobs, and our ability to plan inclusive communities.
Recently Bill C-304, a bill to establish a national housing strategy, passed second reading in the House of Commons. This is an extremely important step in addressing homelessness. While Citywide Housing Coalition fully supports the bill as drafted, we know that a national housing strategy won't solve anything without the concurrent commitment to fund a permanent social housing construction program. Along with the many housing and social service groups across Canada, Citywide Housing Coalition adds our voice to the cries for the 1% solution, which is that 1% of every annual federal budget be allocated to new construction of permanent social housing.
We have a couple of caveats.
First of all, the 1% solution is only a solution if we are not already in crisis.
Our government may argue that they are already spending 1% of the budget on housing. This could be anything from home renovation grants to research. We have learned to choose our words very carefully, which is why we say 1% of the federal budget must be spent annually on the construction of new permanent housing affordable to people with the least income.
Added to the 1% of the budget, there must be additional federal funding to address the immediate crisis of homelessness, the need for supported housing and treatment programs, and in particular, the crisis of homelessness in the aboriginal community. In Vancouver, aboriginal people comprise 2% of the general population but they make up 32% of the homeless population.
Canadian architect and philanthropist Phyllis Lambert has called social housing the architecture of opportunity. By this she means affordable housing is the base from which a person may begin to prosper and escape poverty.
A national housing strategy and adequate funding of a permanent national social housing construction program will provide both the literal and the metaphorical support beams of any successful plan to reduce poverty in Canada.
Thank you.