Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-416 on affordable housing. It has been of great interest to me for many years now.
Last week the media quoted it as a tragedy and a national disaster. A street nurse charged that we had conditions so deplorable that they violated the United Nations basic requirements for refugee camps. One observer appalled said that she was struck by the images of body after body after body. We may think this sounds like a description of a war area or a third world hospital camp, but it is not. It is an emergency shelter for the homeless in Toronto.
As the Toronto Star pointed out, anybody who doubts the need for more affordable housing should watch the one minute documentary that made newspaper headlines last week. It shows a man searching for a place to wedge in his narrow mat and sleeping bag, stumbling over prone bodies, packed together like sardines in a can. The unidentified shelter is just one of the many across Canada and the situation reoccurs with depressing monotony, night after night.
However it does not have to. Affordable rental housing has been a critical need in Canada's major cities for years. Today in most communities more condominiums are built new or converted from existing apartments than new rental units are constructed. Even though the economy is relevantly buoyant, the national rental inventory is shrinking and singles entry level rental housing is practically unavailable.
While it is clearly a provincial responsibility under the constitution, roller coaster federal funding for non-profit housing has seriously upset the free market for affordable housing and the provinces ability to respond accordingly.
For many years the government has provided most of the funding and grants for social housing but unfortunately what was good intentioned, the hope of providing economically affordable housing, has been bogged down in community desires for aesthetic preferences. Construction costs have soared as architects, designers and well-meaning people add to projects eating up precious housing dollars. At the same time capable private housing providers are discouraged from attempting to respond to this very significant need. While non-profit projects enjoy tax free status, municipal taxes are punitive, being much higher for rental units than for private housing. This condition further discourages private rental housing providers.
Private businesses cannot compete with the multiple grants, the tax free status, the funding latitude for excessive architecture and the municipal taxation relief available to current social housing providers. The result is that many working poor are left wondering why their housing has fewer features than the social housing projects of their neighbours.
Because constitutionally housing is a provincial matter, the question we at the federal level need to ask is: what can the federal do to help the provinces remedy the situation?
The Liberals say “We will spend another $753 million of homeless funding on non-profit social shelters and transitional shelters and spend more again on non-profit housing with more to follow”. The Liberals leave us without a plan, without guidance and without funding for private housing providers.
The Progressive Conservatives say “Spend $1.25 billion on non-profits, fund co-op housing and give away federal land”. Again we are left without a plan, without guidelines and no funding for private housing providers.
The NDP says, “Spend 1% of Canada's GDP. No rooming houses are wanted”. Again, there is no plan, no guidelines and no funding for private housing providers.
These are obviously ineffective approaches. First, in co-operation with the provinces, we need to develop a clear national policy for shelter and housing. This policy must incorporate guidelines and rules that will permit private housing providers to participate on a level funding and benefit playing field with non-profit providers. The homeless problem is not caused by a funding shortage. The root of the problem lies in how the money is being spent.
In contrast to the good intentions of the hon. member for Vancouver East, the bill is mired in legalese and logistics that, by constitution, are provincial and therefore outside of Ottawa's sphere of authority.
I also hope that this was unintentional on the member's part, but the bill seems to blatantly discriminate against the most affordable housing that is readily attainable, what is commonly referred to as rooming house rooms. Surely the hon. member does not intend to do away with rooming houses, as Bill C-416 seems to indicate. To do so, especially with a crisis looming in affordable housing, would be unconscionable.
One need only ask the people living in Toronto shelters and others how many could and would gladly pay $300 per month for a clean, secure rooming house room if there were any available at all. I am sure the member from the NDP could easily verify that one half of Toronto's homeless sleep on the streets or in emergency shelters because there is no independent entry level housing available.
I do mean inexpensive, privately operated rooming houses with a shared kitchen and bathroom and not expensive, high-rise apartments that house only a lucky few, such as the ones that Jack Layton wants to build at a staggering $100,000 per unit. I repeat that I mean basic rooming houses like the ones that could be built by the hundreds by private operators who are ready, willing and able to proceed if only assisted with a mere $15,000 per unit of funding.
Toronto's annual funding cost for 6,000 homeless is a staggering $180 million or $30,000 per shelter bed per year. With only 25% of this annual cost or an investment of $45 million 3,000 rooms can be built. That would empty out half of Toronto's shelter system. Imagine closing Toronto's shelters because of lack of use.
Where could the $45 million in funding come from? How about Toronto's share of the $753 million national homeless funding? How about the minister responsible for the homeless actually dedicating the homeless funding for homes for the homeless? That is a rather radical thought, shocking some would say; homeless funding for the homeless.
The Department of National Defence in Toronto could get their armories back. The city of Toronto could save $90 million per year because those 3,000 roomers would be able to pay for their own housing and enjoy the dignity of self-sufficiency and security that most of us desire.
Imagine properly designed, private business transit shelters for short term emergency use with 4 people per room, not the 100 per room, as was shown on the recent video presently, being contracted by non-profits to the city and not for $45 a night but $20 per night, cleaner with more security, privacy and dignity for the client.
Can private industry alone fix the homeless plight? Of course not. They are proven experts in efficiency when it comes to bricks and mortar and tenant management. One only has to turn back the clock 30 years and count how many homeless there were on the streets of Toronto at that time. Why there are so many today?
Toronto's homeless plight can be greatly relieved not by pouring millions of dollars into social shelters and not by building grandiose high-rise social housing, but by reinvesting in entry level private housing such as rooming houses and economical walk up apartments and investing in traditional, modest, affordable starter housing. Toronto's mayor, Mel Lastman, summed it up simply and succinctly last week when he said “We need more affordable housing, not more shelters”.
Rather than focusing on increasing shelter space, I say we must focus on encouraging the building of independent living homes. We must develop and implement a national housing and emergency shelter policy. Private industry under appropriate government agreement could and should have access to the same benefits as non-profits for providing affordable rental homes.
Taxpayer funded housing assistance should be restricted to funding economical entry level homes. The Liberals have failed miserably in helping the homeless find affordable independent living homes. We must do better than this.