Hello.
The Alliance des maisons d’hébergement de deuxième étape pour femmes et enfants victimes de violence conjugale, which is a group of second-stage shelters for women and children who are the victims of domestic violence, has 38 member shelters in Quebec and has been working on the issue of the social housing stock.
I would like to pick up on something mentioned earlier, even though I often disagree with that person. It is indeed close to five per cent of the population that has much more specialized needs, and the government has a responsibility to those people.
First of all, there are the women who are victims of domestic violence.
Further, in our opinion, the various programs are not tailored to the victims' specific needs, and the processes are onerous and very inflexible. I would also add that the program objectives do not match the needs of the women using our shelters.
The third point pertains to the various funding envelopes, specifically, what is allocated to the private sector versus what is allocated to non-profit housing organizations. This was discussed at length in the last hour. I must say that it is very unfortunate that we no longer say social housing, but rather affordable housing. We must get back to the social dimension and an understanding of this extremely vulnerable segment of the population who need public assistance.
We have specific recommendations in this regard. Our brief has not yet been translated, but you will be receiving it in the coming days.
First, we would like to see a program for shelters that truly meets victims' needs and that addresses specific needs, in particular the significant challenges relating to the confidentiality of our shelters. Our shelters must remain confidential to ensure the safety of the women, children and workers.
Second, social housing—with emphasis on the word “social”—must be available to victims when they leave emergency shelters or second-stage shelters. That is not the case now, in view of the lack of social housing. When social housing is available, some priority must be given to survivors of domestic violence.
The third recommendation pertains to the distinction between funding earmarked for the private sector and funding for non-profit housing organizations that offer services to vulnerable populations.
Fourth, we call on the government to support all of the right to housing recommendations that were published recently by the federal housing advocate. I think her recommendations are all excellent.
Finally, we also emphasize that the proposals must be considered through a gender-based lens.
The National Housing Strategy included targets for women when we negotiated it with Minister Duclos. Unfortunately, we are not sure that some of those targets are in fact being met. In any case, they are not being met in the Canada-Quebec agreement.
I could name a number of challenges with these various programs. Non-profit housing organizations that offer services are in competition with the private sector, but it is not a level playing field at all. For the rapid housing initiative, for instance, the submission deadlines were very tight. People in the private sector are obviously much better equipped to submit what was required within such tight deadlines. Community organizations that help the victims of domestic violence do not develop projects with 100 housing units. Our focus is the women's safety. Second-stage shelters work with women who are at the greatest risk, namely, those whose partner has proven to be dangerous and who spent time at an emergency shelter. That applies to 8% of the women who use an emergency shelter.
For safety reasons, we cannot create shelters with more than about 15 units. Getting a backhoe loader to build 15 units obviously costs the same as getting one to build 50 units. So our projects are much more expensive. That is one of the reasons that a distinction must be made with respect to projects that provide social housing for very specific populations. We must not be in competition with the private sector in this regard because we are not on an equal footing.
These populations are in extreme need. The shortage of shelter spaces is well known by the department responsible for the status of women.