Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 29th, 2018

[Insp Colleen Yee]

Again, for us, the veterans we are aware of are self-identified. We don't even know if they're truly veterans or if it's mental illness that's coming into play and they're assuming that identity for whatever reason.

In general, my experience with the homeless, from working in operations, is that these people are a vulnerable sector of the population, and there are predators out there who prey upon them. For the ones I have met who have, in their past life, been of some stature of strength and ability, there is shame associated to that, to how somehow they've let themselves get to this point where now they are the person who's being beaten upon, the one getting taken advantage of or extorted or whatever. The victimization, whether it's reported to us or not, does contribute to a sense of self-degradation. It lessens their self-worth.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Chen and Ms. Ludwig, you're splitting your time, I believe?

[Karen Ludwig, New Brunswick Southwest, Lib.]

Yes. Thanks, Chair.

I'd like to thank you all for your testimony today. I'm splitting my time, so I have to be really fast.

To the two officers, are service dogs allowed in the shelters that you're working with or that you're associated with?

[Cst Alyson Smith]

I'm not sure, specifically. Many of our shelters do accept pets, not just service dogs.

[Karen Ludwig]

You mentioned sleeping bags. Are the veterans who are homeless—not “homeless vets”—allowed to take their sleeping bags into the shelters?

[Cst Alyson Smith]

Yes. Most of the shelters themselves will also have bedding and sleeping bags, but certainly people are allowed. Their property comes with them.

[Karen Ludwig]

Being in the Vancouver area, do you have a rough percentage—it doesn't have to be an exact figure—of how many first nations veterans have come forward who are homeless ?

[Cst Alyson Smith]

I don't know in terms of veterans. In terms of our homeless population, I don't have the numbers, but certainly a higher proportion are indigenous.

[Karen Ludwig]

You also mentioned that not all the veterans are Canadian. What would be their countries of origin, and is there an issue regarding language use?

[Cst Alyson Smith]

Again, just a general number was collected. It just said “other countries”, so I don't know, unfortunately.

[Karen Ludwig]

I want to highlight another point you made. You mentioned that as the number of services increases, there tends to be an increase in the draw. Since 2015 we've introduced a number of new programs. Is that possibly why there's a bit of a parallel in an increase in the number of veterans or in the access to services?

[Cst Alyson Smith]

It could be. I think that, our housing crisis here in Vancouver is certainly contributing to our homeless population, but I also think it's kind of “if you build it, they will come”. We have the services, so certainly people are coming to access those services. Yes, I would assume there's a bit of a connection there.

[Karen Ludwig]

Okay.

Mr. Pearce, first, thank you for all of the work you're doing. I have just a quick question for you.

There's a study on the mental health of the Canadian Armed Forces. Regular forces members have higher rates of depression and generalized anxiety disorders than in the general population. Women, according to the 2013 StatsCan study, have higher rates than men. Do you find that as well within your shelter?

[Matthew Pearce]

Absolutely. The rates for women are much, much higher. Yes.

[Karen Ludwig]

Thank you.

[Shaun Chen, Scarborough North, Lib.]

I want to start off by thanking Inspector Yee and Constable Smith for their work. It's really good to see that the Vancouver Police Department sees the issue of homelessness as one that needs to involve outreach. That's very important. You have a policing role but also a role to serve the community.

Mr. Pearce, you mentioned a very good point, that it's important to have a quick turnaround when it comes to providing service. Often homeless people who are coming in are then heading out very quickly. To build on what my colleague Ms. Ludwig said, our government has invested tremendously, with $10 billion provided over the past three years to provide services and programs to support veterans. One of those is the veterans emergency fund, through which an eligible veteran is able to get up to $2,500 per year.

Have you been able to connect any of the homeless veterans you come across with this particular fund, which can provide money for housing, food and other expenses?

[Matthew Pearce]

The turnaround has not been that quick, although I know that's been the intention. I know the intention of this minister. Quite frankly, he's been very vocal about a desire to shift the culture, I think, of VAC. As I think he said in a recent interview I heard, the shift would be from how can we not give support to how can we give support. I think that will see itself in the light of day, going forward, but we don't have a quick turnaround.

This is not something I mentioned, but almost to a one, for the veterans we meet, those 10 years or so of degradation also include increasing frustration and anger with VAC. VAC was not there for them. They don't feel VAC is responsive to them. I'm sorry to say it that way, but I think it needs to be looked into. They don't see VAC as a support; they see it as the opposite. They see us as a go-between. They see us not as a representative of VAC, as of course we're not, but as a go-between.

[Shaun Chen]

Our committee has met with veterans and has heard from many of them. I know for a fact that there's a caseworker assigned now per veteran, somebody whom they can contact, and that has been very effective in providing more direct service. A lot of these programs will hopefully, over the coming months and years, have that positive impact that we are all looking for. I know the veterans emergency fund became effective this past April. These changes, I hope, will bring about positive change to help complement the work that the police and organizations like yours are doing.

[Matthew Pearce]

I'm convinced it will.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

That ends our time for this panel.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank Inspector Yee and Constable Smith for all you do for the homeless. Thank you for your time today in front of the committee. If there are any answers that you wanted to further elaborate on, you could just get them back to the clerk and she'll get them to the committee.

We'll break and recess for a couple minutes while we get the room changed up and our next panel in.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

We'll come to order.

In the second panel we're pleased to welcome, by video conference, Mr. David Howard, President of Homes for Heroes Foundation, and Tim Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. Both will have a presentation of up to 10 minutes. We can start with David's presentation, unless Tim wants to go first.

Who drew the short straw?

[David Howard, President, Homes for Heroes Foundation]

I appreciate your taking the time to listen to what we have to say. We created the Homes for Heroes Foundation three years ago now. The goal was to develop a system through which we could help our homeless veterans across the country.

Our goal is to build villages of tiny homes across Canada in every major market where there are homeless veterans, with a full resource centre. It's not just the housing; it is the idea, the understanding, to make sure we have wraparound services.

We built this program by meeting with veterans and having a chance to discuss with vets living on the street what their needs are. They came to us and said that they'd like to be in a space where they're with like-minded individuals, people who are veterans. Some of them already had been in spaces that they found too big. Large apartments of 600 or 700 square feet were too much for them, and what happens is that they start hoarding. That's why we went to these tiny homes.

The resource centre is a very important key to this project in terms of the fact that there would be a resource officer assigned to it. The goal here, hopefully, is to work with Veterans Affairs, have a case manager assigned to the project, and have them work through the process.

What the veterans have told us is that they want to come into a place, make sure they understand that they have a home, and work on themselves. If there are issues with drugs and alcohol, they want to get support and treatment for that and get back on their feet and get full-time employment. They have said to us that they then would want to move out of the project, make room for the next person and be the mentor for that project.

That is our program.

We're working with municipalities across Canada. Our cost is roughly $2.5 million a project to build a Homes for Heroes project of 20 homes per village. That is for the homes and for the cost of putting $500,000 in trust. What that doesn't include is the land. We've gone to municipalities and said to them that they have an issue in regard to homelessness on their streets, with many veterans within that, and it is costing them money. We understand that the cost can be anywhere from $60,000 to $70,000 per person, so it's to their benefit to work with us and get land.

We have our first piece of land. We're building in Calgary. That is starting already. It will be open in July. We have another piece of land in Edmonton.

The problem we're finding is that municipalities and provinces are saying that they have a lot of homeless vets and that it isn't their problem—that it's Ottawa's problem and it's a federal issue. We're having a difficult time convincing them that they should give us land for this project. It's one of the obstacles we have. We understand that housing for homelessness doesn't fit within the Veterans Affairs mandate, and that is an issue for us. It's difficult for us to get any support on funding if it doesn't fall within their mandate.

Another key thing we found, I think, is in terms of the numbers that are being reported. The last I heard, what was coming from Veterans Affairs was roughly 2,200 to 2,500 homeless vets. Even their own Veterans Affairs people in Calgary with whom we've spoken believe the number is probably double that. The issue there is that these counts are being done in shelters, and veterans aren't self-identifying. They're not sitting up and saying that they're veterans. Also, a lot of them aren't using shelters, and a lot of them are couch surfing.

These are some of the issues we're facing right now in trying to get our project going, but we believe that we have a project that we can implement across Canada and that we can solve—if not end—the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Tim will give his testimony and then we'll open it up with rounds of questions for everybody.

[Tim Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness]

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity. I'm pleased to be here speaking to you from Calgary, from the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7 in southern Alberta. The city of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, region III.

I'm here in my capacity as the President and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness with some expertise in preventing and ending homelessness, including experience developing housing programs for homeless vets. I also served just over six years in the Canadian Forces and am a Veterans Affairs client myself. All that is to say that this is an issue that's really close to my heart, and I'm thrilled to be here. I'm really glad that you're studying the issue.

I think I have two main messages for you.

The first is that veteran homelessness in Canada is readily solvable. The number of homeless veterans in Canada is relatively small. It's unknown, but it's relatively small. We know what to do and we know how to do it.

Our American friends have cut veteran homelessness in half in just over eight years, and there are eight U.S. cities that have ended veteran homelessness altogether. To put the scale of that achievement in perspective, there are about 37,500 American veterans homeless on any given night, compared with all Canadian homelessness, which is about 35,000 people per night. That's a significant improvement and a significant achievement in the States, which shows that it's certainly possible.

I believe that with a focused effort and a sense of urgency, veteran homelessness in Canada could be eliminated within three years or less.

My second message is that we know what to do. We have a strong veterans network. We have solid expertise in communities like Homes for Heroes. We have proven models to follow, and I think we have strong public support. What's missing is federal leadership and decisive action. We need a federal government prepared to make a clear and unequivocal commitment to ending veteran homelessness and to invest the fairly modest additional resources needed to get the job done.

What would it take to end veteran homelessness in Canada? There are five things that I think are essential, and I'll go through these quickly.

First is prevention. We have to stop the flow of veterans into homelessness. There are tools being developed to assess veterans for risk of homelessness today, including some excellent work being done in the States by a gentleman named Dr. Dennis Culhane, from the University of Pennsylvania, who is a research director for the VA's National Centre on Homelessness among Veterans. If we understand who's at the greatest risk of homelessness—and I think we can understand that—and we understand a veteran's pathway into homelessness, then we can intervene before homelessness occurs.

The second is borrowing the old military axiom that time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. Solving homelessness requires actionable, real-time, person-specific data on everyone experiencing homelessness. We can't gather the necessary information to house homeless veterans solely by counting them anonymously once every two years or by having information collected by a handful of agencies or Veterans Affairs. We have to document the names and unique needs of every veteran experiencing homelessness and have an ability to share that information among those in the community who can house and support them. We have to be able to monitor performance, notice fluctuations, identify problems and respond in real time.

This approach to homelessness data is being wired into the new federal homelessness strategy, Reaching Home, that will launch in April. So that you don't think that getting this level of data is impossible, as of today, there are already 11 Canadian cities with quality by-name lists on chronic homelessness, and another 23 actively working on it.

The third issue is paying the rent. A critical gap in our federal response to veterans homelessness, in addition to the point David made about having it within the Veterans Affairs' purview, is the absence of a veteran rent supplement program. We should carve out of the new Canada housing benefit a federally administered veteran housing benefit modelled under the U.S. HUD-VASH voucher that the Americans are using. Any person meeting the VAC definition of veteran, meaning anyone who has completed basic training and has been honourably discharged, should be eligible. This would be a powerful homelessness prevention tool and an efficient and very cost-effective way to move veterans directly off the streets and into housing.

The fourth is to use Housing First. This is a recovery-oriented approach to ending homelessness that centres on quickly moving people experiencing homelessness into independent and permanent housing and then providing additional supports and services as needed. Housing First is an evidence-based approach that has been proven to work with homeless vets and is at the heart of every successful effort to prevent and end homelessness.

I think Veterans Affairs should stick to what they're good at and partner with local organizations to do the housing and work with veteran service organizations and others to provide the outreach support.

The federal government already has the community-based infrastructure through the homelessness partnering strategy in Employment and Social Development, the new Reaching Home strategy.

I would use that infrastructure and presence in 61 communities in every province and territory. Ending veteran homelessness would require an additional investment in housing supports and coordination in those communities, but the infrastructure is there, and there's an opportunity to leverage provincial and community resources.

I'll wrap it up there, but I want to reiterate the point that veteran homelessness in Canada is readily solvable. We know what to do and how to do it. We have strong veteran networks, solid expertise in communities, solid infrastructure in place and proven models to follow. All that's missing is federal leadership.

We have a duty to these men and women, and I think we should get on with it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

We'll start with the questioning now.

Mrs. Wagantall, you have six minutes.