Ottawa extended the Homelessness Partnering Strategy until 2019 with $119 million per year in funding, down slightly from $135 million per year over the first five years. The government claims administrative savings and more tightly focused spending will mean no effective cut in the amount spent on services to the homeless.
“They are to be applauded for moving to a housing-first approach, which is evidence-based,” said Dr. Stephen Hwang, a scientist and homelessness researcher at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital. “It’s wonderful that the federal government decided to renew the federal homelessness initiative for another five years.”
For the next five years Employment and Social Development Canada will concentrate funding on programs that take the housing-first approach to mentally ill and addicted people living on the street. A $110 million, 2008 to 2013 research project led by the Mental Health Commission of Canada showed how getting the most visible and notorious homeless people into permanent housing first leads to greater success down the road treating addictions and mental illness and keeping people off the streets.
Toronto’s Streets to Homes program has moved about 4,000 people into their own apartments since 2005 using a housing-first model. Eighty per cent of Streets to Homes clients remain in their new homes at least 12 months. And Edmonton’s housing-first initiatives cut that city’s street population by 20 per cent between 2008 and 2010.
The government has set an expectation that 65 per cent of funding to Canada’s 10 largest cities will be spent on housing-first projects. Smaller cities will have to come up with housing-first initiatives for about 40 per cent of their funding. Rural communities will have no housing-first threshold.
But while the experts say funding such programs is a smart, common sense, effective plan, Catholic agencies that deal directly with mentally ill and addicted street people are warning it’s no silver bullet.
“The challenge is that governments are singularly focusing in that direction now, and they’re not investing in the other models and other tools that actually have a significant benefit,” said St. Michael’s Homes executive director Ron Lirette.
“There isn’t balance.”
For 40 years St. Michael’s Homes has been helping alcoholic and addicted men, many of whom have lived on the street, with a long-term treatment program. But there’s more to the story than just drugs, booze and mental illness, Lirette said.
“We’re not wrong to say mental illness is a challenge, but it is an oversimplification,” he said.
At Good Shepherd Ministries in downtown Toronto, assistant executive director Aklilu Wendaferew looks forward to applying for Homelessness Partnering Strategy funding. He knows the approach can work, but he warns against thinking we now have a cure for homelessness.
“Just relying on one, single approach to the problem wouldn’t be a wise approach,” Wendaferew said.
“Depending on the circumstances you may have to adopt a number of approaches. Mental health is an issue. Addiction is an issue. But, you know, poverty in general is a serious problem.”
When recession hit at the end of 2008 the numbers of people sleeping at the Good Shepherd and the numbers dropping in for meals both spiked.
“That was not really an immediate mental health problem. That was loss of income and poverty.”
Poverty in general was the “elephant in the room” at an Oct. 29-30 Ottawa conference sponsored by Employment and Social Development Canada, said Hwang.
“It’s very difficult to say this solution is one solution for everyone,” Hwang said. “The saying that once you have a hammer everything looks like a nail applies here. We have a very effective hammer and if the problem is a nail or the issue is a nail it works very well. But it’s not a panacea.”
Lirette advocates a deeper involvement and investigation into each individual case to find the reasons why people have become addicted, mentally ill and homeless.
“The system hasn’t always responded effectively to the whole person,” said Lirette.
Most of all, people should understand that a large number of people sleeping in shelters and on the street is not a permanent feature of urban life, said Hwang.