Evidence of meeting #40 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was john.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Have you identified problems or shortcomings in the design or delivery of the program? Do you have any recommendations for the committee about it?
Executive Director, Housing Alternatives Inc.
Our experience here in Saint John has been that we have access to some housing. Our provincial government has stepped up and provided rent supplement agreements for 10 units per year for a two-year period. That certainly has made a huge difference for us.
One of our greatest challenges is ensuring that adequate services are available to wrap around the individuals. We do not have sufficient funding to roll out, based on At Home/Chez Soi, which was a Cadillac model—I don't think there's any question of that—the type of team that provides those necessary services. We here in Saint John have developed what is called a specialized outreach team. We are relying on services from different agencies, such as government agencies and mental health and addictions, to work with us as a team to provide those services. That has been one of our greatest challenges, access to services for mental health issues.
Liberal
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Thank you, Chair.
Kit, we'll talk a little more about housing. First off, I just want to commend you for the work you do certainly with Housing Alternatives and housing first. I think they're wonderful programs.
We're here as a committee to get advice and ideas from our presenters as to what we can do as a federal government to come up with a better poverty reduction strategy. If you were us, from a federal government perspective, what would you do to improve housing for people in Saint John?
Executive Director, Housing Alternatives Inc.
I think it's quite clear that access to affordable, adequate, suitable housing is absolutely essential. If we want to tackle the issues of poverty, housing is foundational. It's fundamental. First and foremost, we need additional housing. When we talk about affordable housing, it is not necessarily just affordable to those of the lowest income; we also need affordable housing for those we refer to as the working poor.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
I'll just expand on that, if I can. Is it just more money you need? Is it more dollars you need, or is it a better alignment of government? Is it streamlining of services, and do you need to see more innovation? Is it just a financial thing that you need?
Executive Director, Housing Alternatives Inc.
I don't think it's strictly financial. As a non-profit organization, certainly we do not have financial resources to develop housing units beyond a few here and there from year to year. I think it's the will of all levels of government, and the business community and the non-profit community as well have a responsibility to ensure that we have adequate housing stock.
If we are not investing in the adequacy, suitability, and safety of housing, it impacts each and every one of us. We have increased calls for service from police and fire services. There are more demands being placed on the health care system. There are more demands being placed on the education system.
No, it's not just money. It's also ensuring that the municipality is aware of inclusionary zoning, ensuring that as new housing units are developed, some of them are affordable. It's also essential that we continue to develop mixed-income communities, that they're not 100% subsidized housing projects.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Perfect.
Tony, thanks for the work you're doing with ONE Change and Outflow. I'm proud to say our MPs office is very involved with Outflow. We're down there every Saturday morning serving breakfast to the men in need there. We're certainly privileged to be able to do that.
Can you share with me the challenges that you face, from a shelter perspective? With the financing that you get, we won't name a number now, but you basically have to fundraise almost two to three times that just to survive. Can you talk to me about the challenges you face, from a shelter perspective, and how you may be able to benefit from more alignment of federal and provincial government support?
President, The ONE Change Inc.
The number one issue, from my perspective of fundraising, is the time investment. I put out six grant proposals in January. Every second that I'm doing one of those, I'm not with one of my guys assisting him to get through whatever barrier he has at that moment. The guys have a wide range of needs. For some of them, it's a five-minute conversation, but for other guys, it's long-term advocacy. Balancing the two things, the actual work I'm passionate about with trying to get money to do it, is a struggle.
With funds, everybody is going to tell you that more money would be better. It seems that right now we've got three feet of problems and one foot of resources to solve those problems.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Is it an alignment of services? For example, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that every Saturday morning we're down there, there could be somebody who might be able to write a prescription, or somebody who might be able to give some counselling or something like that.
Do you see opportunities to wrap more support around the shelters?
President, The ONE Change Inc.
We're starting to work on those types of things now, but not necessarily specifics. I've been meeting with mental health, and we're trying to figure out ways for guys at the shelter who need that sort of health care to get those services, or how to get the services to them. We're two blocks away from some mental health care, but a lot can happen in those two blocks. It's not as simple as just walking to the building. A lot of the mental health care is at the Mercantile Centre, which is a very intimidating building to walk into. It's a nice building, a wonderful building, but it's what it is. Having services provided there, or easier access to services, is certainly one thing we're working on. We're at the early stages of that, so I'm not sure exactly what that will end up looking like.
The other thing is connecting guys into different health.... In addition to mental illness, there are addiction issues that some of my guys have, and there are cognitive issues. There's a variety of barriers that make it intimidating to talk to a doctor about whatever. I went to a doctor's appointment with one of my guys, and the level of communication between the two was a struggle. I was there partly to fill the void when the guy didn't know how to answer the question or something like that.
I think it would be valuable to have people dedicated to advocacy in those lines. It's very easy for you and I, in a lot of cases, to meet with professionals. For people who have been marginalized their entire lives, meeting with a professional is horrifying, in some cases.
Liberal
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thanks very much.
Althea, I wanted to start with you. You talked about looking at measurements. We've talked about a whole bunch of things from the low-income measurement to the basket measurement. What are some of the things you think need to be in when we're coming up with the measurement for poverty? What sort of indicators need to be in there?
Because I only have so much time, please keep that quite concise.
Manager of Resources Development, Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation
If you're looking at a measurement, it needs to be something that measures not only urban but also rural. In meetings, we've heard about some provinces that can't even use what is out there right now because it doesn't take into consideration the indigenous population. If you're looking at what should be considered in a market basket measure, it should be your food, your housing, your transportation, or the lack of transportation. Consider that as well, because a taxi costs more or a shuttle costs more than just your local community thing. That is one thing that's very important as well.
I think those would be the main three ones, your food, your housing, and your transportation—possibly education as well.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you so much. That was awesome.
Anthony, you talked about generational issues with poverty—which we've heard about—and I see a lot in our own community, the lack of transitional, where we see families that have been there for generations of this.
I recognize that it's a symptom, but what is it that we can do to have a hand up, looking at it as a form of transitional housing and not permanent housing? What are some of the focus things we can do as a government?
President, The ONE Change Inc.
Do you mean transitional housing as related to generational poverty?
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
What I'm finding is that we'll have people coming in, and you're expecting the housing to be for one, two, or three years. But in my own community we have families that have been there for decades, as have their parents and their grandparents.
What would you recommend for solutions on how we transition people from housing?
President, The ONE Change Inc.
I think that's going to be different, based on the person you're interacting with. There will be broad strokes where, if employment is a reasonable goal for a person, what is preventing employment from happening? Is that something like a criminal record check needing to be done, or is it that there is no bus service? For example, if the place down the street is hiring, you may be asked why you don't get a job there. But who'll watch your kids at three in the morning while you're working? It's that type of thing. This is where lived experience needs to be part of it.
If it's an issue of this being what people are used to, or something like that.... The work we're doing at the community centre goes across ages, and it lets people see new perspectives. The most important thing, again, that we're doing with our programming is that people are coming to us and telling us what they need. It's not the board dictating what's necessary.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay.
Daniel, you talked about the regional income convergence. We also talk about “snob zoning”, where people want to keep their communities as is. They want to be in an influential community. We see a whole bunch of issues like that as well.
In Vancouver, we know that the average cost of a home is over $1 million. In the greater Toronto area, it's about $650,000, and $126,000 is what it was for New Brunswick when I looked at previous stats.
There are a couple of different things. How would you approach this with the need for affordable housing when looking at these different dynamics across the country where we see almost a million dollar gap from the west to the east coast?
Should there be something that we look at for targets? When we're looking at construction of affordable housing in some of these areas, should we say that a percentage of housing must be put into affordable housing, and how can we bypass...? We talk a lot about those restrictions. Bob and I have done round tables across Canada, looking at these things. When you talked about the restrictions, that was the number one thing we heard from homebuilders—restrictions and red tape. Can you inform us of some of your thoughts on that?
