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COMMUNITY: Up to 300,000 or nearly 1% of national population homeless in Canada

            (AlbertaIndex, June 28, Thursday) --- Homelessness has grown into a $4.5 billion a year problem for Canadian taxpayers, said The Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. In 2005, up to 300,000 Canadians or nearly one percent of the country’s population were homeless while children accounted for nearly one in seven users of emergency shelters. 

            In a special report, Shelter: Homelessness in a Growth Economy, the foundation blamed “a decade of inaction” for allowing the problem to fester and worsen, thus costing taxpayers an estimated  $49.5 billion.
           
Author Gordon Laird writes that federal spending on homelessness amounted to only 17 cents per Canadian per day in 2006, down from 20 cents in 1991. He cites “a lack of national leadership” for the intransigence of homelessness in Canada.
            “Canadian governments have focused more on short-term crisis management over long-term strategic investment. Their response to homelessness over the last decade has sometimes bordered on outright neglect. In practical terms, absenteeism on housing and homelessness has exacerbated efforts to reduce poverty in Canada,” said Laird.
            The report said there is widespread “housing insecurity”, with more than 2.7 million households paying too much of their income to keep a roof over their heads. Last year, nearly one quarter of all new Canadians were paying more than half of their family income on rent.
            The young are a big part of the problem, with one third of the homeless aged between16 and 24, while children accounted for nearly one in seven users of emergency shelters.
            Laird said that an estimated 1.2 million children --- one in six --- live in poverty in Canada. Aboriginal Canadians are vastly overrepresented in homeless counts.
            The report found that poverty is the leading cause of homelessness in Canada.
            With roughly half of Canadians in fear of poverty, Laird said a lack of affordable housing threatens both low and middle income Canadians.
            Homelessness costs Canadian taxpayers between $4.5 and $6 billion every year. It also leads to other societal ills, including malnutrition, unemployment, addiction, mental illness and family strife.
            To combat homelessness, Laird recommends in his report:
            ·    Relieve low-income Canadians from making a choice between food and shelter by indexing welfare, shelter and social assistance to inflation.
            ·    Develop alternatives to traditional home ownership, including developing market and non-market units, rent-to-own, with incentives for households, builders and municipalities.
            ·    Invest in affordable housing alternatives such as independent housing trusts, mixed income co-operatives, and even non-traditional interim shelters such as Tent City.
            ·    Municipalities rezone for new basement suites.
            ·    Government downloading of responsibilities should be stopped unless accompanied by funding.
            ·    Use rent supplements to make up the difference between affordability and market rents.
            He said: “It isn’t necessary for governments to continue studying the problem of homelessness. It has been studied to death. It is now time to take action and formulate an effective strategy to eradicate homelessness.”
            The Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership was created from a bequest by Sheldon M. Chumir, Rhodes Scholar, lawyer, businessman, civil libertarian and Alberta MLA (1986 - 1992). Mr Chumir believed that ethical values are fundamental to a healthy society, and wished the foundation to influence ethical actions in the practical world of politics, business, government as well as community structures and processes.

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