Evidence of meeting #48 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 community.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Pamela McConnell  Deputy Mayor, City of Toronto
Michael Bach  Executive Vice-President, Canadian Association for Community Living
Mary Todorow  Research and Policy Analyst, Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario
Magda Barrera  Housing and Economics Policy Analyst, Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario
Pedro Barata  Senior Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives and Public Affairs, United Way Toronto and York Region
Donald Johnson  Member, Advisory Board, BMO Capital Markets, As an Individual
Sandra Datars Bere  Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London
Victor Willis  Executive Director, Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre
Deirdre Pike  Senior Social Planner, Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton
Alana Baltzar  Volunteer, Hamilton Organizing for Poverty Elimination, Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton
Alan Whittle  Director, Community Relations and Planning, Good Shepherd

10:10 a.m.

Senior Social Planner, Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton

Deirdre Pike

Thank you, Alana.

I have a couple of other things that I would like to mention.

We have left with you a really great report that we have just completed in Hamilton. It's called a “social audit”. It's an opportunity we had to have 29 people with first-voice experience tell their stories to people who were deep listeners and influencers from our community, such as the Catholic bishop of Hamilton, the president of nursing at St. Joseph's Healthcare, and the head of journalism at Mohawk College. These are people who have an opportunity to listen to these stories and to do something with them in a different way. Through that opportunity, we have some very strong recommendations that I think you will appreciate, upon reflection.

One of the key things we noted, of course, was the connection between poverty and mental health. One of the recommendations was to significantly increase the investment in affordable housing with supports for people living with mental health, intellectual disabilities, and addiction and concurrent disorders. One of those examples I want to leave you with today is that of the choir we started in January. It's called “Singin' Women”. It is a choir for women at risk of or experiencing homelessness. It is essential that you apply a gender lens to this conversation. In doing so, we recognize the need for really essential supports like this.

Alana's mother and I will sing in the alto section tonight for our debut at a downtown venue in Hamilton. We're going to sing three songs. This choir is filled with about 15 women with the lived experience of homelessness who are still currently at very high risk of that and are finding life, passion, peace, and empowerment by sharing their voices in that choir. That is the kind of innovative support that I think can make huge differences, but that is not the place to land. What really needs to happen, of course, is adequate, affordable housing, and again, with the supports that are needed to obtain that.

Again, finally, I would ask you to take a look at HPS, your homelessness partnering strategy. Under that, I'm engaged as the coordinator of the Women's Housing Planning Collaborative in Hamilton. I think every community across the country needs to have a coordinator of women's homelessness that can put that gender lens on, because under the new directives of HPS, the women's homelessness system has been destabilized in a couple of ways in Hamilton. Because of the definitions, women don't often meet the specific criteria for “chronically or episodically homeless”. Therefore, housing first is leaving many of our women behind. I urge you to take a look at that as something concrete.

We have many more places that we could chat about later, but maybe we'll save that for some questions.

Thank you so much for your time.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you to both of you for being here and sharing some of your lived experience. Something we are trying to do in this committee is to open that up so that we are familiar. One of the reasons we are travelling is that we can actually go and see, not just hear about some of the places and some of the programs that are working. Thank you, both.

10:15 a.m.

Senior Social Planner, Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton

Deirdre Pike

I'll get you a ticket for the choir tonight, if you like. Brian May, from Queen...you must be pretty good at music.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Not that I haven't heard that one before. That is now in the record, thank you very much. I often put on a very bad British accent for the telemarketers. They see it and they go, “The Brian May...?” I put on this bad British accent and say “Yes”, and then I hang up, causing all kinds of confusion.

We'll move on very quickly to Mr. Alan Whittle, director of community relations and planning at Good Shepherd.

10:15 a.m.

Alan Whittle Director, Community Relations and Planning, Good Shepherd

Thank you very much for having me this morning. It's a pleasure to present to you, and I hope my words very much complement the comments of those who have preceded me.

There are four things in particular I would like to try to address this morning and they are as follows: the provision of truly affordable housing for the long term, the importance of adequate supports for addressing homelessness, the critical role emergency shelters play in our community, and the idea that one size does not fit all.

First, I'll say a few words about the organizations I'm speaking on behalf of today. Good Shepherd works with a very diverse range of vulnerable populations through the provision of services and supports that address the needs of those who find themselves without adequate housing, food, clothing, and many other things.

In the Hamilton-Toronto area, Good Shepherd comprises three charitable organizations. In Toronto there are the Good Shepherd Ministries, and in Hamilton, there's the Good Shepherd Centre. Over both those communities, we have Good Shepherd Non-Profit Homes. I'm here today representing primarily the latter two, but I know many of my thoughts reflect those of the organization in Toronto.

Collectively, the two organizations I'm speaking on behalf of today operate some five emergency shelters in Hamilton: one for families, one for youth, one for single men, one for single women, and one for women and their children who have experienced domestic violence. As well, we offer a broad range of services, including emergency food and clothing programs, counselling, palliative care, parenting for young mothers, and personal supports for the frail and elderly. As well, we're one of the larger community mental health programs in the province.

In addition to the 392 units of affordable housing that we own and manage ourselves, we have partnerships with private sector landlords for an additional 435 units, primarily through head lease arrangements.

When I'm talking about affordable housing, I really want to make a distinction at the outset that I'm talking about that particular aspect of what I will refer to, if I may, as the Canada-Ontario affordable housing program. Part of it is about building new affordable housing. I want to focus on that first.

I think dating from the Second World War it is clear that the provision of affordable housing has generally been an afterthought. More often than not, it has been a pressure release valve for when there's been a crisis in affordability or for when our economy has been in recession and has needed a kick-start. In my opinion, the response rarely gives much thought to the long term, and as with the current program, doesn't respond to those most requiring truly affordable housing.

Let me illustrate with a few examples. In the decades that I've been developing housing, I know of no program across this country that has required that units of housing built with some form of subsidy through federal or provincial contributions must remain in perpetuity part of the affordable housing system. Some organizations like ours have this as their mandate, and they will continue to ensure that there is affordable housing, but for example, under the current program, after 20 years, in many cases, you're able to turn that affordable housing into condominiums or whatever.

Is this current program truly affordable? I think it is not, unfortunately. It does provide some really valuable housing that's slightly below market, but it does not—and I think this was pointed out earlier—really reach those most in need of housing. I think it was earlier this morning that someone from the City of Toronto was addressing the fact that so many people who are on Ontario Works or Ontario disability are basically kept out of that system unless they're able to find some other form of supports.

Are rent subsidies and housing allowances the answer? I think they are a part of the solution, because if nothing else, they provide an element of choice and flexibility to the system. However, in and of themselves, they are not sufficient. In our private sector rental units, as an example, we have for years been able to work with landlords to accommodate many of those we serve in units throughout the city who we would never have been able to house simply because we haven't built enough affordable housing.

With the current market in rental housing and the rental rates, many people are saying that even though we've had a great partnership, for decades in some cases, they're now moving to a more upscale market because they can get more revenue. As a result, we're now finding that we can no longer provide enough housing for even those people we actually have subsidies for, so we're actually losing units that we could provide market rents for with subsidies.

What is to be done? I think it's now time for the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to work together with municipalities and with organizations like mine, and others like it, to create a not-for-profit housing sector in this country that is largely self-sustaining. I think for far too long we've thrown a bit of money at the problem, but we really haven't thought about doing affordable housing long term. I think that should be a priority for us.

My next few points address the HPS program. Good Shepherd has operated as generally a housing first model since the early 1990s. As a result of the funding that's primarily come from the federal government—thank you—we've been able to expand our housing first service program quite extensively. However, under the current program, no funds can be used to provide health services, and the related supports are limited to a two-year period. The assumption seems to be that these supports are the responsibility of the province. Be that as it may, the problem with trying to coordinate services across a single level of government are immense, but trying to coordinate them across multiple levels of government is even tougher for an organization. We're prepared to take that challenge on. We will continue to do it, but I think when we create these programs, we really need to think about the person we're serving in the end.

I want to give an example of the impact of some of the support housing programs. In the previous fiscal year to the current one, we took 30 new tenants into our homeless program. In the prior two years before joining the program, those individuals and families collectively spent over 3,700 days in hospital in Hamilton. The rates that the hospital charges in Hamilton would exceed $5.5 million for those two years. It would be just over $2.75 million a year in psychiatric hospital stays, not to mention any other kind of service; those are just psychiatric hospital stays. Since joining the program, these same 32 individuals spent a total of 190 days in hospital, representing a cost of $285,000 annually to the system. That's a saving of approximately $2.5 million to that part of the system. This doesn't look at any of the other hospital costs or any of the police services, court system costs, food banks, and whole array of services that would normally have been involved in this.

I want to quickly move on and talk about emergency shelters. I know that certainly under the current program the emphasis is on housing first, and so it should be, but I think perhaps we have a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater in this particular case. Where possible, yes, we need to move people quickly into their own home, but there are many people for whom that is not a possibility, if for no other reason than there isn't enough affordable housing. We do need to have shelters in place, and we do need to make sure they're funded, particularly on the capital side. There needs to be a possibility to improve them. If you should ever have the opportunity to visit us in Hamilton, we'd gladly show you some of the great improvements we've been able to do in terms of moving it away from what was basically a working-house system, penal system, from the 19th century.

I want to wrap up by talking about how one size does not fit all. I'll give you one example of a situation with regard to a program we run at the City of Hamilton. A family was going to become homeless because their stove didn't work. The program guidelines normally wouldn't let you do something as simple as buy them a new stove so that they could stay in their home. So if we can have that kind of flexibility, whether it's dealing with gender issues, other sorts of barriers that people face, or even something as simple as replacing a stove, we can often prevent homelessness in our communities instead of making people homeless.

Thank you.

10:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you very much, sir, and thank you for all the great work you're doing.

We'll move on to questions. Up first is MP Poilievre.

10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Thank you very much.

We have been hearing a lot from different organizations that argue that our system's social safety net is underfunded, particularly in the area of housing, which arouses a question for me. When I was first elected, the Martin government began increasing funding for housing. The Harper government then maintained that funding, and during the great global recession, we had something called the stimulus, between 2009 and 2011, which saw massive one-time infusions on top of the funding that existed. Provincially, in Ontario, we hear regularly about funding increases for housing. Municipal governments make similar announcements.

Speaking of municipal governments, their revenues have been growing at two and a half times the combined rate of inflation and population growth for roughly a decade and a half, all while two-thirds of the costs for capital projects have been uploaded to provincial and federal governments. All of this money is pouring in and growing, yet I don't hear anyone appearing before us saying, “We have enough money now. We've finally met our needs”. In fact, what I hear is the opposite. As these budgets just seem to grow at rates that vastly exceed the population and cost-of-living increases, so too do the shortages of funding.

I have a hard time understanding what's going on here, where we see vastly increasing budgets yet the need, far from diminishing, seems to grow. Does anybody have any explanation for that paradox?

10:25 a.m.

Executive Director, Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre

Victor Willis

If I might, what's interesting is that in 1992, when Paul Martin tightened his belt, I think he actually tightened the national housing strategy from the government at the time. Subsequently, in 1995 and beyond, housing was downloaded to various provinces and then municipalities, and often the programs that were supposed to follow those social housing programs didn't follow. Toronto is a good case in point.

I think the other thing we have to keep our eye on for the people we're talking about, who are the most vulnerable.... The health accord, when it was first identified, paid 50% of the health costs. I think now it's actually down to around 21% by the feds and is predominantly picked up by the provinces. We have a real problem in how to account for and properly track money, funding, and of course, impact.

You're quite right. There is quite a bit of money being put into the system. The other part is the money that's coming out of the system and where it goes. I think we've had some examples today that some of those investments, when they were made, were very appropriate and then were pulled out of the idea of perpetuity, of affordability, and have left.

The other part of this that is really unfortunate about affordable housing is that if you create affordable housing that's at 90% of the market value, that's considered affordable, but we know that predominantly that's not affordable in most municipalities.

March 10th, 2017 / 10:25 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

You touch on the issue of fungibility, which is to say that it's hard to know where a dollar goes when it's transferred from one level of government to another. When you pour a glass of water into a swimming pool, you can't then go and take the glass and pull the same water out of that pool. It's now part of that pool. I often wonder where all these federal transfers end up.

We've been, again, massively increasing federal transfer payments now for over a decade and a half. It's true that there were some cutbacks in the 1990s, but that's two decades ago. Since the early 2000s, every single year the federal government has increased transfers to the provinces faster than the combined rate of inflation and population growth, yet the needs of provincially financed programs seems to grow and grow and grow. Every time there's a shortage, politicians from various levels of government just point at each other and say, “Oh, you know, you're not giving me enough” or “There were cuts 25 years ago, and that's the reason we don't have enough money today”.

Mr. Whittle raised an interesting point when he talked about the complexity of multi levels of government involved in the same project. Napoleon used to say that he'd rather have one incompetent general than two competent ones, because at least he'd know who was responsible for leading the troops. Do you think there's a problem with that? Are there too many levels of government involved in the same thing, and as a result of that multitude of complication, we fail to deliver the results that people in need deserve?

10:30 a.m.

Director, Community Relations and Planning, Good Shepherd

Alan Whittle

To your question, I think that can be a problem. I use the reality of trying to sometimes speak to different stakeholders. You have stakeholder A, who expects you to follow certain practices, and stakeholder B, who expects you to follow mostly similar ones, but they have their own nuances. For an organization like ours, sometimes it means having to recreate the same information, but to tell the story in a different way. You do have that kind of problem.

I'd like to just quickly go back to your earlier point in terms of the gap that's there. If you look at it—and I'm going to do it in terms of units of housing that have been built in this country in the post-Second World War era—you can see that it very clearly comes in waves. There are times when there's a fair amount, and there are times when there is perhaps nothing or next to nothing, very little.

To use Hamilton as an example, some years ago, the City of Hamilton determined that we needed to provide an average of 300 affordable housing units annually. Through much of the 1990s and the 2000s, they didn't meet any of that. They hardly built any units during that time. More recently, in perhaps the last five years, we may have built 300 units. We've managed in one five-year period to do what we needed to do in a single year.

Yes, I appreciate that more resources perhaps have been going toward this, but we've started from such a low base and a deficit that is so huge, and we're so far behind.

10:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you.

Ramesh, please, you have six minutes.

10:30 a.m.

Liberal

Ramesh Sangha Liberal Brampton Centre, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming today to give us your thoughtful ideas to help the committee.

My question is for Sandra Datars. You talked about the poverty rate among the children and about the health issues and the transportation issues end of it as they affect the children. On the 112 recommendations, I think it would be helpful if you would give that recommendations paper to the committee.

My question is on the cost of living here in the GTA and Peel, in the Golden Horseshoe region, all over. It is one that is the highest in the country and it's increasing. It's becoming more difficult for low-income individuals to cope with basic necessities. Public transportation became 30% more expensive from 2009 to 2015, and you have already said that it became free for children under the age of 12 from 2015 onward. What steps are you as an association taking to cope with these problems you are experiencing and that you have discussed today? How do you feel that they can be eliminated?

10:35 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

Transportation is a huge issue even in a community like ours that has a transportation system. The transportation doesn't necessarily take people to where the jobs are. It doesn't necessarily take the children to where the schools are.

The commitment that our council has made has been for supporting money through its multi-year budget for the development of transportation for kids. Our public transit system was already providing free transit for children under five. We added $150,000. I know that it doesn't seem like a lot, but that covered the difference for kids between five and 12 years of age. Also, we've assigned an increase of about $1.2 million to our budget to look at low-income people and transportation.

One of the biggest challenges we have in our community is our ability to get around. What that keeps people from doing is accessing supports, services, food, clothing, and those kinds of things. We continue to need to make transportation.... In a community that for many people might be seen to be a “have” community, we have pockets of poverty. We have pockets of challenging realities. The growing divergence between the haves and the have-nots in our community really means that we have no choice but to put money into public transportation to support families, including children, who are part of families.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

Ramesh Sangha Liberal Brampton Centre, ON

What steps can you suggest to the committee that the federal government should take to overcome these problems?

10:35 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

I think we've been very supported by the federal government in the gas tax monies that have come to our transit organizations. I think there is a recognition, to go back to an earlier question, that transit isn't just about building infrastructure. It's about providing services around it, about making sure that people are aware that this is not just a bus pass; it's a bus pass to get them somewhere with supports for them when they get there.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

Ramesh Sangha Liberal Brampton Centre, ON

Do you have any suggestions besides transportation with regard to housing?

10:35 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

Sure. I appreciated the questions and the responses from my colleagues here at the table.

To go back to a question that the MP asked earlier, it relates to the reality of the housing starts in our communities. In our community we have a need for safe, affordable, supportive housing. There is a significant amount of housing being built in my community that is being built at the high end. They're very expensive homes and high rental-cost properties. Housing is being built in our community, and part of the challenge for municipal governments is to find the balance in supporting those in our communities who want that kind of housing, with supports and infrastructure built around that, while concurrently addressing the fact that much of the lower ends of the market in terms of rental properties are not safe, are not necessarily affordable, and are not really great or supportive places for people to live.

Moving forward, we need to look at that divide in communities. That growing divide in communities is significant.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

Ramesh Sangha Liberal Brampton Centre, ON

What types of steps do you suggest to improve the situation regarding those who are living in poverty?

10:35 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

At the City of London we've developed a new housing development corporation. It's a stand-alone corporation. The shareholder is the City of London, but it's an opportunity for us to work with private partners and with the not-for-profit sector to take the development of housing outside of the “rules”—I say that with the deepest respect—of developing housing within a municipal structure and to work outside of the rules that allow us to support additional development and allow us to publicly bend the rules a little bit. I probably shouldn't say that—I'm feeling like Deirdre right now—but we would do it in such a way that we address the affordability issues or the end-of-operating agreements, which was mentioned here, where we hold people to providing housing longer and not just making it into a condo when they're done with it.

Our ability to do that, with the support of our council, means that we're working with stakeholders in our communities in ways we've never done before. We'd happy to be able to share that, moving forward.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you very much.

Madame Sansoucy, please.

10:35 a.m.

NDP

Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for contributing to our committee's work.

My first question is for the City of London representative.

Ontario's poverty reduction strategy refers to a basic income program. In your presentation, you said that London wanted to be part of this pilot project.

Why do you see basic income as a possible solution to poverty?

10:40 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

In our community, as I said, many people live in poverty. A single person on Ontario Works, the support program that's run by the Province of Ontario, which we support, receives $8,000 a year. It is not sufficient. A basic income guarantee or a basic income project that the province is looking at could double that and provide additional supports for people. Part of that is about not only including an additional income piece but also supporting housing opportunities. We've talked here about the housing first piece. Once you have housing, funding support for individuals to look at other things helps them.

For the City of London, it is about an assurance, and we've looked at this, that people who live in poverty can choose their way, with supports, to rise out of poverty. The social assistance system, while I'm responsible for it in my community and I believe strongly in the support it provides, creates a reality where people make choices within a system. They don't make choices within a system that gives them money or supports them to make their own choices.

We try to do that within our system, but I will tell you that our systems are bureaucratic. I probably shouldn't say that out loud, but they are. They are bureaucratic and rules-based and driven by guidelines and the realities. A basic income allows people to take the money that they receive and use it to be supported in ways that they want to use it. It just doesn't address people who are on Ontario Works, or the Ontario disability support program. It looks at providing supports for other people, people who are providing supports for children at home, or people providing supports for elderly parents, or people who are in that sandwich generation of having to do both at the same time. The broader piece is not just around social assistance. It's about providing supports of income to people who need it and could benefit from it.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC

Yes, it's a matter of human dignity.

The Quebec government is looking at implementing basic guaranteed income. Several organizations, including organizations that represent persons with disabilities, are concerned that it's a way to make cuts to the current programs. The organizations are also concerned that, ultimately, it will make people poorer, since they would lose certain benefits related to the current programs.

How will basic guaranteed income be an improvement over and a supplement to the current programs and services?

10:40 a.m.

Managing Director, Housing, Social Services, and Dearness Home, City of London

Sandra Datars Bere

Your point about not disadvantaging people by putting them into a system is a very important point, and we've started to think about this. Part of the challenge of putting ourselves forward as being interested in the pilot, which was in 2016, is that it has led us to thinking about what the reality of that is. The reality is that income, while it will be helpful, does not necessarily address the supports that are needed to support someone to move forward, whether they have a disability, whether they are....

It was in our communities. I think Ontario, if it will implement its pilot, will need to look at how it surrounds the person with supports. I don't think you can just give people funding and expect that they will just take that and act differently. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I mean the reality is that supports are still needed for all of us in everything we do in our communities. Any pilot developed in the community needs to work with partners in the community, needs to be respectful of what people's needs are, and doesn't need to disadvantage people. They should not be disadvantaged. They should not lose anything through the application of a pilot.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC

Thank you.

My next question is for the City of Hamilton representatives.

You referred to the homelessness partnering strategy, in particular with regard to women. The current strategy allocates 60% of the budget to the housing first program. In Quebec, more and more people who work in the field think they should be able to choose the approach to use.

Should a future strategy give communities the option of favouring a broader approach or an approach such as housing first?