Direction Home

We’ve just seen an enormous amount of attention paid to Remembrance Day and I want to talk a bit about the connection between our military history and housing policy in Canada and also our military spending and lack of housing spending today.

The phenomenon of thousands of troops coming home from World War II – led to a  ‘new direction home’ for tens of thousands of Canadians by instilling the values of a right to housing in the Canadian psyche. They were fighting for themselves and their families for a home and inadvertently fought for the future of so many.

During World War II, the Wartime Housing Corporation had built 46,000 units of housing, mostly for war-workers and they also helped repair and modernize thousands of existing units.  But, when the war ended, more than a million Canadians in the armed forces were ready to return to peacetime life, creating a housing demand that was unprecedented. 

•       In 1945, the federal government declared Toronto an “emergency shelter” area, forbidding people from moving there unless they were starting a job deemed essential.

•       In 1947, Toronto Mayor Saunders put an ad in newspapers saying “Acute Housing Shortage in Toronto – do not come”.

•        In 1946, 600 homeless veterans protested and took control of the vacant Hotel Vancouver as a protest.  They held the building for more than two weeks and due to enormous public sympathy, it was turned into a hostel for up to 1,200 vets until 1948.

•        In 1946, when Ottawa Mayor Stanley Lewis refused to promise housing for Vets, the Vets’ leader Franklyn Edward Hanratty ordered an occupation of the barracks.  Eleven vets, their wives and 18 children took over the Kildare Barracks, unloading a truck with beds, stoves and washing machines to set up house.  More families followed.  Later that year, buildings on the site were leased by the City of Ottawa from the federal government for rental housing.

•       Finally, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was born (now called Canada Mortgage and Housing)

When our soldiers returned from war they demanded a place to call home.  Housing became a right that was worth fighting for, a basic right for all Canadians.  From the end of World War 2 until 1993 our national housing program built 650,000 units of affordable housing, housing 2 million Canadians to this day.  That is our legacy.

Are we creating a direction home for people today?

In 1994 the federal government eliminated all new social housing construction. We lost the capacity to build over 175,000 social housing units (if you consider that we used to build 25,000 units/year 1994 to 2000). If we consider up to the year 2006 that number today would have built 325,000 units.              

We do need to examine where we are allocating federal dollars today – it’s not on housing or homelessness. Defense spending has increased and despite the sentimentalism of the recent Remembrance Day ceremonies, homeless deaths are increasing.  Today, Toronto Disaster Relief Committee added the 500^th name to the Toronto Homeless Memorial board at the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto . 

Deaths in war must be fought against. So too should death by homelessness.

This summer the federal government announced an additional $16.3 billion for defence shopping – helicopters, aircraft, trucks and ships.  Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor told CTV’s Question Period that the Conservative Government considers these purchases to be a first step.

The cost of the 1% solution, the long awaited and urgently needed national housing programme, is $1.6 billion per year.  There is now every indication that the recent $1.4 billion announced for affordable housing, to be spent over a three-year period, will dry up and will not be renewed.  Period. Where is the direction in this social policy?  

Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and the first Atkinson Economic Justice Award recipient, gave a speech entitled “The Ask” at the March 2006 National Conference on CED and the Social Economy.  She reported on the two other major areas of federal spending besides health.  The first is new investments in research and development.  The second, spending on national defence and security which almost doubled between 1996 and 2006.  Defence spending grew from $8.4 billion in 1996-97 to $14 billion in 2004-5.  Last year’s federal budget gives Defence a $20 billion budget by 2010-11.

Quite simply we have to face this formula:

Increased military and defence spending = reduced social program spending.

It is true that outdated military equipment will need to be replaced, but the fact remains that less than 10% of the new money recently announced for the military’s shopping spree could have implemented the 1% solution and recreated our national housing program.  It really wouldn’t take that much for the federal government to bring about an end to the homeless problem and housing crisis in Canada .

Direction towards Disaster

Homelessness should be all of our struggle today – activists, students, everyone. 

Homelessness or being ‘de-housed’ is what is downwind from poverty, it is what is downwind for ordinary people, from St. John’s to Halifax to Montreal, to Gatineau, to Ottawa, to Kingston, to Belleville, to Cobourg, to Peterborough, to Oshawa, to York Region, to Toronto, to Guelph, to Hamilton, to Windsor, to Sarnia-Lambton, to London, to Sudbury, to Thunder Bay, to Winnipeg, to Edmonton, to Vancouver, to Victoria.  These are the places where I have visited and I have seen it. 

In 1998, we formed the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee and we declared Homelessness a National Disaster.  With that declaration, we called for two things:

First, that federal emergency relief monies be released to communities across the country so they could provide disaster relief for their rapidly growing homeless populations. This type of effort is what should have happened in the Gulf coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

  Second, we called for a long-term solution, the 1% solution – a National Housing Programme, where all levels of government would spend an additional 1% of their budgets to build affordable housing. The 1% solution originates from research done by Professor David Hulchanski, who determined that when our federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments were allocating money towards building social housing, they were spending on average 1% of their budgets.

The first item we called for – the federal emergency relief monies, essentially occurred.  Homelessness in Canada was catapulted on the national and international scene and shamed by UN condemnations of Canada ’s record on homelessness.  In 1999, Prime Minister Chrétien appointed Claudette Bradshaw as our first ever Minister Responsible for Homelessness.  In 2000, ‘SCPI’ (Supporting Community Partnerships Initiatives) monies were rolled out across the country - hundreds of millions of dollars!  The hundreds of millions of SCPI dollars, or as I like to call them ‘disaster relief monies’ have funded new shelter beds, renovations to drop-ins, shelters and food banks, programs that target homeless youth, identification replacement programs, even some transitional housing.  But, as my long-time friend and colleague, housing activist Michael Shapcott always says, “people were made more comfortable in their state of homelessness but at the end of the day were still essentially homeless.”

Tent City

  While the crisis of homelessness grew across the country a small group of homeless people found their own ‘direction home’.  Tent City – a home on the waterfront.  It began with a small group of men and women, living in tents, refusing to live any longer in unhealthy, overcrowded shelters with so many rules like curfews.  The community grew until it reached close to 140 people. Supported by the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, the community eventually had over 50 structures including trailers and pre-fab houses, portable toilets, a shower and community meetings.

It was the largest and longest act of civil disobedience by homeless people – fighting for housing since the Depression.  Its end was violent – a brutal eviction of Home Depot but its strength was the capacity of the support for its people that won a pilot Rent Supplement programme to house the Tent City people.

Tent City was an important struggle and several of the people from Tent City such as Dri, remain activists with us, fighting for a national housing programme.

Today – we are in worst shape then 1998. Who is responsible?

Michael Wilson, finance minister through most of the Mulroney Conservative government, presided over about $1.8 billion in cuts to housing programs.

Don Mazankowski, the last finance minister in the previous Conservative government presided over the decision to suspend funding for new social housing.

Paul Martin, as finance minister made massive cuts in health and social spending and announced the downloading of national housing programs in the 1996 budget – which left Canada as one of the only countries in the world without a national housing program. He led the commercialization of Canada Mortgage and Housing in 1998, which included changes to the National Housing Act, eroding the ability of CMHC to deal with the housing crisis.

Several months after we declared homelessness a national disaster, Prime Minister Jean Chretien appointed Claudette Bradshaw as Minister Responsible for Homelessness.  This was a first - Canada had the distinction of having a Minister Responsible for Homelessness but not a Minister with full responsibility for housing.

In fact, we’ve had many Ministers with housing responsibilities, but it would appear that none of them thought their role included the building of housing.

There was Minister Diane Marleau,  Minister Alfonso Gagliano, Minister David Collenette, Minister Steve Mahoney, Minister John McCallum, Minister Joe Fontana and today’s Minister Diane Finlay.  

Isn’t housing a human right, even in Canada ? 

James Flaherty, the current finance minister doesn’t seem to think so. He appears poised to kill all federal homelessness funding, complete the privatization of CMHC, and end all federal housing funding following the roll-out of the C-48 housing dollars in two years time.

The conditions today across the country 

•       overcrowded shelters and conditions that are not meant for long-term living, including some, which do not even meet the UN Standard for Refugee camps;

•       outdoor sleeping that ranges from cardboard and tarpaulin to sleeping bags, to living in cars and vans;

•       new funding rules that prohibit agencies from delivering survival supplies (sleeping bags, blankets and food) to people outside, and an increased intolerance for people sleeping outdoors;

•       an institutional charity response that today puts homeless people at risk by creating congregate sleeping in church basements and forced nightly movement;

•       overflow from the mats in the church basements to tables and chairs where people are expected to sleep;

•       unhealthy shelter conditions that leave people vulnerable to bedbugs...to tuberculosis...to emerging viruses like Norwalk or SARS…;

•       growth of outdoor encampments, squats and tent city ‘communities’ – even in Alberta ;

•       growing family homelessness and a dire shortage of shelters for families with children nationwide;

•       crummy motels that municipalities are increasingly forced to use for emergency shelter for families with children because they don’t have enough shelter space and they won’t create spaces;

•       laws against homelessness such as Toronto ’s City Hall by-law criminalizing homeless people sleeping on the square, and the forced evictions of homeless people nation-wide;

•       unnecessary and easily preventable deaths;

•       the growth of hate, hate crimes and discrimination targeted towards homeless people

No Direction Home

There is no direction home today for people in Canada facing this housing crisis.  There is no national programme.  In Ontario , we have seen dismal delays and the holding back of monies that are directed towards housing.

People are directed to shelters and in winter if they’re lucky they are directed to faith based programmes where they may wait an hour in depression era line-ups just to get inside for a mat on the floor.

Why aren’t we directing our energies to mass mobilization in our communities – to rally for housing; to visit our local MPs and MPPS with delegations of people demanding action?  Why aren’t we fundraising to embarrass the government with demonstration projects that could include putting trailers or pre-fabs on church, public or private property, instead of just year after year like sheep opening up church basements?  Why aren’t we fighting for the tens of thousands of rent supplements promised by the McGuinty government?

What can you do specifically here on campus and in Kitchener-Waterloo to direct your activism, your studies, your money towards a real direction home for people?

Know the economic argument for housing.  It costs the following per homeless person per month:

Hospital bed                  $10,900

Jail cell                          $4,333

Homeless shelter         $ 1,932

Rent supplement:

(in private sector)         $701

(in social housing)        $199

Know your local celebrities that you can draw in to add prominence to your fight.

Create a November 22 National Housing Day event in solidarity with cities across the country. Don’t diffuse your events in K-W by holding them at a different time. Join our car rally on National Housing Day if you can.

Look at creative options – pre-fabs, trailers which can easily be put up on land, even church space and accommodate a homeless person or family.

Argue that your community deserves housing allowances or rent supplements.  Visit your MPs and your MPPS and your new Mayor with delegation after delegation outlining your concerns and demands.

And last but not least join our fight for SCPI – it is the most important fight right now. The programme which ‘sunsets’ in 4 months provides food, shelter, health care, outreach and harm reduction services – life saving services to homeless people across the country. 

Thanks so much for inviting me here today.

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