Which level of government is responsible for homelessness in Canada?
All of them. That’s the problem.
Because all orders of government are directly involved in policy and programming in the area, no one jurisdiction can be held accountable for reducing and eliminating homelessness. Overlapping and competing government roles confound the sector, waste resources and don’t produce good enough results for homeless people. Although the federal government has invested more than $1 billion in direct homelessness programming since 1999, our best estimates suggest the number of homeless people hasn’t actually decreased, quite the contrary, actually.
What’s more, we now know what to do to reduce and eliminate homelessness: provide housing to homeless people. Research is demonstrating, not surprisingly, that homeless people, even those with severe mental illness, are better off in stable housing than living on the streets or in shelters. What is surprising is that this approach, called “Housing First,” can actually cost government less than funding shelters, emergency care and correctional services for homeless people.
So what’s the solution? A strong start would be to redefine the role of the federal government and let the provinces lead the way.
The federal government plays a vital role in Canada’s homelessness sector but the time has come for it to withdraw from direct programming and refocus its efforts on assisting the provinces to reduce and eliminate homelessness. Provinces are already expanding their homelessness policy and program capacity and they should be empowered to take more responsibility for this policy area.
The federal government should announce in its 2013-14 budget its intention to negotiate bilateral funding agreements through which federal homelessness programming resources would be transferred to the provinces. The federal government should also consider directing the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. to create a “Housing First Fund” to finance provincial housing initiatives for homeless people. Finally, Statistics Canada should be enabled to collect national homelessness data and report annually on successes, failures and trends in the sector.
Transferring primacy in the homelessness file to the provinces is manifestly not enough to reverse the rise in homelessness in Canada. Each province needs a minister responsible for homelessness (some already have them). The minister can then lead the arduous yet necessary task of streamlining and integrating disjointed funding and programming from across different provincial ministries.
By undertaking more effective horizontal and co-ordinated program development, we can better serve homeless populations, address the underlying causes of homelessness and move more people into permanent housing. There are compelling successes emerging from across the country, Trois-Rivières, Peel Region and Fredericton being three which are demonstrating how to effectively integrate services in a client-centred manner.
To achieve this goal, provinces also need to incentivize the transition from homelessness to stable housing by linking shelter funding to outcomes. This means provincial shelter funding should be linked not only to the number of clients served or bed usage, but to the shelter’s success in supporting its clients into stable housing.
Provincial governments should also consider announcing moratoria on increasing shelter bed numbers, as Newfoundland and Labrador has. This policy challenges shelters to focus on turning shelter beds over more quickly, help clients find housing and break the cycle of chronic shelter use.
Canada has the capacity and tools to transform the lives of our homeless population. A few sensible policy changes may help turn homelessness into a problem of our past and not our future.
James Hughes’ paper, Homelessness: Closing the Gap Between Capacity and Peformance was released this week by the Mowat Centre, at the School of Public Policy, University of Toronto. He is president of the Graham Boeckh Foundation and previously served as deputy mnister of New Brunswick’s Department of Social Development.