DTES Homeless: Sam Sullivan Singing That Familiar Tune, but with Feeling...

Municipalities demand $3.35 billion a year for social housing

Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun

Published: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

VANCOUVER - Homelessness in Canada can be solved with a concerted effort to create more social housing, says the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

But there is a hefty price tag: municipal, provincial and federal governments have to spend $3.35 billion a year on social-housing programs, the FCM said in its National Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness, released today in Vancouver.

A key step, FCM officials said, is a commitment from the federal government to continue funding social housing programs that are scheduled to end in March 2009.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan speaks at the release of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities National Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan speaks at the release of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities National Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness.

The federation wants to see a long-term plan to tackle homelessness to get away from year-by-year funding by the federal government.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan said there is great concern that local governments would "lose the momentum" in their efforts to provide necessary social housing if the federal government ends its commitment in 2009.

"When the federal government reduced its commitment in the early '90s it was followed by a reduction from the provincial governments," said Sullivan.

Sullivan said the responsibility for social housing really belongs to the federal and provincial governments, but cities and municipalities have been forced to step in.

"Even though homelessness is a federal and provincial responsibility, it manifests itself in cities," Sullivan said. "Vancouver, for instance, has put $155 million into social housing over the last five years. It's not our mandate, but we see it as something that needs to be done."

According to the FCM report, a total of 27,000 assisted-housing units have been built in Canada during the last five years.

"The main impediment to expanding these efforts is the expiry of all federal social-housing funding programs in March 2009," said the report.

It said the problems of homelessness and housing affordability are already straining the "limited resources of Canada's cities" while the termination of federal programs "will seriously undermine efforts to attack the issue of homelessness."

Among the report's recommendations:

- End homelessness by creating 20,000 new "transitional, supportive and permanent" housing units in the next 10 years.

- Expand the stock of affordable non-market housing by ensuring they make up 15 per cent of total annual housing starts.

- Cut the backlog of people needing social housing by 25 per cent by increasing rental assistance and expanding the number of units available through new construction or acquisition.

- Modernize existing stocks of social housing at the rate of 20,000 units a year and renew existing subsidies.

- Extend and revise the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program to improve 10,000 existing private homeowner and rental units a year.

gbellett@png.canwest.com