Poverty and Homelessness

"It's not high in terms of people's level of consciousness and it isn't a high priority for senior levels of governments. They've worked around the edges but haven't invested the kind of money you need to put the housing and support in place to get these folks off the street and into reasonable housing. When you achieve that, homelessness becomes transitional -- a quick turnover. That's where we want to get to."
"They stay there waiting for subsidized housing to become available, and typically, if they get subsidized housing through a rent supplement or social housing, they never come back -- their homelessness is done. But they are staying longer in shelters because they are waiting longer, and they are waiting longer because of limited housing stock. With kids, they're not looking for bachelors or one-bedrooms."
"It's a significant problem affecting a significant number of people, and we've made no headway in the ten years we've been collecting data on it. Homeless can be solved. We never used to have this problem. We had programs."
Tim Aubry, University of Ottawa professor, community housing specialist

It's difficult to conceive of, in a country as wealthy as Canada that so many of its citizens live in poverty. Even worse, given that there are social welfare organizations operated by municipal governments and churches to help the low-wage earners struggling to make ends meet, that there are large numbers of homeless people living in the towns and cities of the country. These are not just the working poor and those on welfare, but those afflicted by mental illness and drug and alcohol addictions.

Canada once had mental institutions to which people with mental afflictions were referred. They were out of harm's way, with medical attention provided as required. Life wasn't optimal for them, but they were by and large protected both from themselves and from their mental illness impacting on society at large. And then came the time when advocates for the mentally ill conceived of the notion that they would be far better off on their own, independent, with assistance when and as needed.

Government leaped at the opportunity to rid itself of expensive medical-hospitalization institutions housing the mentally ill, and those mental institutions became history, and the mentally ill were finally free, free to wander about as they wished, free to take their prescribed medications if they wished to, or not, if they declined. Little wonder their conditions deteriorated, both their mental health and their well-being, as rather than being housed they became the great unhoused.

The Alliance to End Homeless pointed out that there are approximately one thousand beds in shelters for the homeless in Ottawa. And the trouble with that is that there were 7,308 single people and family members using shelters in 2012. The statistics are sobering; 858 families looking for affordable housing in the city of Ottawa, the nation's capital; sharing facilities at the city's two centres for homeless families, awaiting their time on a waiting list to finally result in the housing they need.

There are 1,125 homeless single woman, and 381 homeless youth. What could possibly be more desperate than to be without the security of a home, of warmth and comfort, food and the company of loved ones. Youth are in transit, living off the streets for a variety of reasons, often enough because they've suffered abuse, because they've been rejected, because they have no other choice. Some live on the street while trying to attend school

"These are people who have come from a harder place. A shelter is a scary place but the people in there have run out of options. They are often mentally ill or have an addiction and they're often not allowed to go back home. But the chronically homeless have lived in shelters for so long, you can't just put them in a place where they have nobody to talk to or nobody to eat with At least shelters give them that. So once they are housed, what resources are you going to give them? You can't just put them in a building without support. The federal government has been dragging its feet for a long time", said the former executive director of the Ottawa Mission, now Ottawa Food Bank chair.

The city government launched a five-year plan named The Road to Ending Homelessness in Ottawa and it is now into its last year. The observation was made that neither the federal nor provincial governments have been involved to the extent they should be to ensure that the program meets with success. Given that our self-respect as a society is involved here, and more importantly the well-being and needs of a vulnerable demographic is not being met, much depends on their doing just that.

Research has demonstrated that giving people self-respect back and the opportunity to live normal lives by providing them with shelter, with helpful supervision and health care, and the encouragement to turn their lives around, seeking employment and security, is an investment that pays off handsomely. As it is, the cost to hospitalize people in response to medical emergencies, the cost of police services, and temporary shelter is far more expensive to the public purse than doing the decent thing.