XI.5.2018 - Housing Ends Homelessness
The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) is convening their annual convention in Hamilton next week for three days, http://conference.caeh.ca. The theme this year is “Beginning the End of Homelessness in Canada.” I‘m disappointed that I won’t be able to attend because of prior client commitments. But I did take some time to reflect on the state of homelessness in Canada and the United States since 2001 when we started to work in this sector — 17 years ago.
I pulled out a flip chart that I created in 2012 to capture the “universe” of homelessness. This is a marketing exercise that we often use in the private sector as a visual, decision assistance tool to determine if introducing a new product or service is feasible in any given market space. We capture competitors, price points, patents, research, delivery channels, geographic or virtual locations, staff expertise, differentiating features and categories, etc. This approach is an effective reality check to figure out if an investment of time, energy and resources would generate the market share and profit that we needed to proceed.
In the language of systems thinking, homelessness is a “messy” problem and my 2012 flip chart underlines that point. There is a myriad of underlying economic and social factors that contribute to an individual or family experiencing homelessness. A short list would include poverty, job loss, vulnerable physical or mental health, addictions, discrimination, addictions, gender-based and family violence, family breakdown and, critically, the lack of the only solution to homelessness — affordable housing.
When I engaged in my obsessive flip chart scribbling in 2012, an official with the Housing and Urban Development Department in the United States stated that it would cost $20 billion to eliminate homelessness in the United States. Sure. Canada spends more than $7 billion per year in the same quest which means that we have invested $42 billion since 2012 ($32 billion USD). Canada has a population of 36 million people and the United States has 324 million citizens. Back to that HUD official. Where would the $20 billion be invested: permanent supportive housing, transitional shelters, addictions, food scarcity, medical care, life skills training, emergency shelters, or subsidies to precariously housed individuals and families? Homelessness is a messy problem.
The attendees at the 2018 CAEH Conference in Hamilton next week will be encouraged by the launch of Canada’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy as well as a National Housing Strategy. The housing strategy is based on the premise that safe, adequate, and permanent housing is a human right. In 2016, 35,000 Canadians were homeless on any given night and at least 235,000 people experience homelessness in Canada in any given year http://homelesshub.ca/SOHC2016. We have a housing crisis. Homelessness is the symptom or key indicator of the depth of the crisis. When people have housing, they live longer, their health and mental health improve, they can build positive family and community relationships and they can help make our society better.
I hope that my many friends, colleagues and clients who are attending the CAEH Conference are able to bring a new level of analysis and action to help end homelessness in the various communities that they represent and serve. This is another opportunity to “Think Different” (thanks Steve Jobs) and to figure out how to make housing affordable for everyone in Canada — now.