Mr. Speaker, first let us talk a bit about those in the shelters, those who have been used, frankly, as a kind of symbolism for affordable housing fundraising and for coming to the federal government for affordable housing money. It is the poor people who are in the shelters. Certainly we can argue statistically, one balance or another, because some of them have multiple challenges.
What I am saying is that 25% are probably the de-institutionalized with mental challenges and another 25% have certain other addictions, making it very difficult for them to exist. The fact remains that the 50% number is made up of people who are fully capable of living on their own. Quite frankly, they have some income and could very well live on their own if there were modest housing available for them. Yes, Toronto's number will be slightly different than Calgary's or Edmonton's, but overall the mix is the same whether we are talking about Toronto or about Edmonton, where I live.
When I see the SCPI funds going into funding $4 million, and this is just one example, to move 62 people out of a rented shelter into an architecturally designed shelter that has exactly 13 more beds and now has a budget that is 50% higher than it was before, I know it does not help those homeless people at all. What it is doing is building a shelter system.
What about those homeless people? When are they going to have the dignity of their own private single room home so they can close the door behind them in the evening, something modest? Then they can have the dignity of being able to afford to pay it for themselves. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, there is multiple family housing.
Why not have that offered by the irregular housing industry, assisted by some granting, probably to supplant all of the other barriers that have been in the way of creating rental housing, to bring back that industry again? Why does that industry have to be in the hands of non-profits? There certainly is a role for non-profits, but if we want the big bang for the buck, we want to work with the boardwalks that have tens of thousands of units. Those are the people we want to work with to get the bang for the taxpayer's buck, to build multiple units, not just one-off projects.
Certainly there are solutions required and it is a very complex issue all the way up and down, but we should not ignore the private sector and, for heaven's sake, we should not ignore the people who are still locked up in the shelters because we have not done a darn thing for them.