Plan to help homeless needs more details
The Daily News
Published: Friday, May 30, 2008Anyone with a nice home, whether paid for or mortgaged, may want to think twice if they believe they are unaffected by the homeless crisis in Nanaimo.
Now that the province has for the most part abdicated its role in helping the poor by cutting social assistance and housing subsidies, the role of helping the homeless has fallen to municipalities.
Though Nanaimo has developed a plan to help the homeless that will rely on funding from Victoria and Ottawa, this is not a problem that any city should have been saddled with. The basic problem is that decisions made by officials five and six years ago that have resulted in widespread homelessness.
It was a system that wasn't broke and didn't need fixing, except in the eyes of a government fixated with an ideology, now wearing thin, based on privatization of everything from health care to ferries. If there was no potential profit in homelessness, then this government had only limited interest in the issue. And even that limited interest seemed to be restricted to how to cut spending in that area.
The plan by the city embraces the city finding housing stock and using the federal and provincial money to get people into rental suites. The question that has to be asked at this point is, what rental suites?
It's been a decade since any low income rental units have been built in this city, and though the plan is to use subsidies until the stock increases, such rental units won't just magically appear. Outreach workers, a few who work for the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance but not nearly enough, may be able to help the homeless realize how they can get funding, but in Nanaimo the lack of affordable housing remains a notorious fact.
As noted in the today's Daily News, with only 1% rental stock, there are very few decent places and -- along with everything else -- prices are going up. What is needed are rental suites that are readily available to those who get the proposed subsidy.
It's a bit of a frustrating situation caused by the housing boom (now a bubble) of the last decade. The money went out of renting, and construction went to building residences for purchase.
Though the city plans to create 305 new housing units in the next five years, and that sounds great, how are we going to pay for this? This is an idea that deserves full support, but the conference centre alone will have to be subsidized $750,000 for the next few years. Taxpayers need more details because this is an idea that will be to their benefit only indirectly. If there's a way to do this, or a chance it may not happen, residents need to know how this will happen or how to make it happen.
In the absence of any apparent interest by the province in the issue of the homeless, this is vital. The city has recognized this with an action plan, and the proposal that it be accompanied by a harm reduction strategy is important.
As homelessness emerged as a serious problem in Nanaimo and other B.C. cities about five years ago, those with addiction and mental health issues were the hardest hit. In the last 18 months it has spread to include the working poor.
Though the city is doing great work in its commitment to this plan, the weak part is the dependency on partnering with the federal and provincial government and the Vancouver Island Health Authority. As VIHA is so underfunded by the province, it's a tricky question as to what they will be able to bring as a meaningful part of any solution.
More details of this plan are expected to be revealed in about a month, and it will be interesting to see how up to 70 new rental units will be acquired this year. We need details not only on who will buy them, but who will pay to maintain them.
Housing the homeless is essential, and there is nothing simple in the process either. That's why we need more details about this plan.
