Houselessness is a Policy Choice
Houselessness in Canada
According to Statistics Canada, more than 235,000 people in Canada experience houselessness each year.
The messed up part is that Canada (a nepo-country with immense wealth) has the means to fix its houselessness crisis, but it lacks the multi-government collaboration and commitment (that we saw in the early days of COVID-19) to do so.
We struggle to wrap our heads around this because Canada's deliberate neglect of unhoused people results in preventable and premature deaths. The average life expectancy is 82 in Canada, but for unhoused people, it is 42.
Ultimately, addressing Canada's houselessness crisis is a question of whom our politicians deem as deserving of investment to ensure their human rights are upheld and that they can live a dignified life.
Houselessness vs Homelessness
A home is used to describe a space where one’s community lives; their loved ones, and pets; where sentimental possessions and valuables are held.
A house is a structure whose primary function is to be a personal shelter, and it can be turned into a home, but it is not necessarily inherently one. The difference between the two is why we say homesickness and not house-sickness.
The word homeless has become an othering term used to dismiss, dehumanize, and demonize people who are unhoused. It's long overdue to get rid of the outdated pejorative terms, along with transient and hobo.
Houseless better describes the situation at hand, which is a lack of access to housing, not the absence of a home.
Leading causes: poverty & lack of social safety net
Houselessness is a direct result of the systems in which we live because who is in government and how they allocate funding and resources directly impact the health outcomes of communities. Read that again: our health outcomes are directly related to policy decisions.
Housing unaffordability is the leading cause of houselessness. When the cost of housing increases despite wage stagnation and relocation isn't an option, many people are forced into houselessness.
Catastrophic weather events caused by climate change also contribute to houselessness, forced migration and internal displacement.
Systemic racism and Discrimination in hiring practices, banking/loaning, leasing, and social services, as well as the ongoing racism experienced, contribute to the ability of BIPOC to secure affordable housing.
Unaffordable and inaccessible healthcare, including insufficient disability & chronic illness support, an overworked healthcare system, and lack of public health funding, mean chronically ill or injured folks are unable to get adequate support, which impacts their ability to work and that can lead to becoming unhoused.
Mental illness - wait times for mental health supports, lack of culturally relevant mental health services, and lack of affordable mental health supports mean many people who have acute mental illness can lead to someone becoming unhoused.
Substance misuse and abuse coupled with issues like injuries or chronic pain that prevents work and the inability to develop healthy coping methods (due to lack of access to mental health and addiction resources) can also lead to houselessness.
Domestic violence - women and/or families seeking to escape domestic abuse don’t always have the means and connections to find permanent homes, which can put women in impossible situations of staying with their abuser or becoming unhoused.
Systemic racism and houselessness
The history of enslavement, displacement, resource extraction and settler colonialism means that many minority groups have been historically denied socioeconomic opportunity and access to a dignified life, racism that remains entrenched in our systems to this day.
This isn't an individual issues, it's a system failure
When you think about how so much of the policy decisions in Canada cater to communities that are large voting blocks, donors to campaigns and quick turn around wins for that re-election resume, it is unsurprising (though still unacceptable) that our governments continue to fail our most vulnerable populations.
But what about the rest of us? Why do so many of us forget that the people sitting outside in the cold is a person too. A person whose life matters, a person whom our government has neglected, a person who doesn't need our (ill placed) judgement, but rather our solidarity?
There are some issues in Canada that are "out of sight out of mind" but most of us are watching in real time as this crisis worsen. We can (and must) rally around more warming stations, or the need for better-funded shelters, but ultimately these are temporary solutions, a bandaid, to a giant system failure.
Housing is a wicked problem
Wicked problems are problems that are difficult to define, have many interdependencies, several causes and no simple solutions.
The solutions require the ongoing commitment & engagement from multiple stakeholders to address. Housing has a lot of stakeholders - starting with people who are unhoused. Aall three levels of our government (including multiple ministries/departments within them) are stakeholders, as well as those outside of the public sector, such as landlords and employers.
Solutions to wicked problems require a corporation and commitment to disrupting the status quo in policy and implementation from stakeholders.
The job of public sector stakeholders is to care for the public, and private sector stakeholders can be offered incentives. So it shouldn't feel as impossible as it does in Canada, where time and time again, Canada fails to get it's shit together enough to address vulnerable communities - in this case - unhoused folk.
Case Study: Housing Crisis in Toronto - bandaid & longterm
Consider the houselessness crisis in the city of Toronto, for example. The city has decomissioned shelter services, is continuing their ongoing militance against encampments, has restrictive policies for when to open warming spaces, and underfunded social services.
These conditions mean that hundreds of people need immediate, often life savings support to ensure they are out of the cold and supported, even if those are only bandaid solutions.
But we also need intermediate solutions, like increased funding for shelters, increasing access to warming stations, policy focused on demilitarizing encampemnts & to ensure people without a permanent address can access social safety net services.
But we also need long-term, comprehensive solitions including permanatent afforable housing for all, police reform, all of which must be done in consultation with unhoused folks who have direct lived expieince.
How to help
Make a donation to your local charity for Houseless People, some examples are:
The Period Purse (providing free menstrual hygiene products in shelters, drop-in centres & other spaces)
Homes for Heroes Foundation (supporting houseless military veterans)
Hands Up Canada
Raising the Roof (building affordable houses for the houseless)
Shepherds of Good Hope (providing food and temporary shelter for the houseless)
Volunteer with your local shelter
Vote for candidates who propose affordable housing policies.
Campaign for affordable housing
🚨 Agent of Change Alert! 🎉
On Canada Project is excited to introduce University Health Network’s Social Medicine Program’s as our very first OCP Agent of Change 🚀🚀🚀
On Canada Project’s Agent of Change Program helps OCP continue to be an independent media org (and retain 100% editorial control) while also collaborating with community partners who are very strongly value aligned! 🫱🏽🫲🏾 - email us to find out if you are Agent of Change material, or find other ways to work with us here.
📣 About the Social Medicine Program at @uhntoronto
UHN Social Med knows that health and poverty are inextricably linked. Social medicine is about defending human dignity and preventing avoidable suffering by taking a more proactive approach to health.
The Social Medicine Program at UHN is focused on integrating social determinants of health (e.g. housing, food) into care delivery and better partnering with community organizations to improve the quality of care for disadvantaged populations.
Their current health equity initiatives include:
➡️ Affordable and supportive housing
➡️ Social isolation and loneliness
➡️ Food security
➡️ Poverty
We’re so excited to invite @drandrewbb and his team at UHN Social Medicine to our Agent of Change program 🎉
