Housing and Homelessness

Just a quick note to let you know that I am spending the week in St John’s, NFLD at the CHRA Congress on Housing and Homelessness. The CHRA conference is my favourite national housing conference, bringing together housing providers, funders, and government to talk housing.

It is always inspiring, and frustrating, to come to these conferences. Inspiring with all the good work happening by the affordable housing sector. They think clearly about the people they serve and the best way to do that. Truly, from New Glasgow to Nanaimo to Iqaluit, there are amazing stories of people finding success and stability because of the work of these not for profit agencies.

But it is incredibly frustrating that so many people here know it is not enough, that the challenge of affordable social housing is getting worse not better. We are hearing how housing is foundational to better health outcomes.. and saves the healthcare system money. It is better for community building, saving the justice system money. The research is all there, the proof exists. I am in a room with 650 other people who know all this.

Yet, the decision makers keep making short-term narrow decisions. For example, Manitoba has just committed a measly $12.8 M in new funding for building new affordable housing, across the whole province. To give you an example of what that means, Westminster Housing Society, an NFP housing provider that I am involved with, built a new building that opened last year. It provides 21 units of social housing in my neighbourhood. That project took us 4 years to complete and cost $12M.

In Manitoba, Right to Housing has identified that we need 1,000 new units per year, for the next 10 years. 10,000 units are needed. The government committed to 670 new units in 2025, and now 215 in 2026. We need 1,000.

The main question in all of this is how do we actually make our decision makers “get it”? How do we get electeds and the public to understand this is foundational, literally and figuratively, for the future of our communities?

No doubt you will hear more from me. I am more inspired than frustrated. These conferences are energizing.

Brian

A couple of previous posts from me about this issue:

Trickle-Down Housing

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March 20, 2024

A new tool was released recently to help understand the housing issue and crisis in cities right across Canada. I attended the launch of the Low End of Market Rental Housing Monitor (thankfully abbreviated to LEMR) on March 14th and have finally had a chance to dig around in it a bit.

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