Government housing shortchanged — for years

Opinion

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This article was published 09/01/2024 (645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Not having a place to sleep at night is probably one of the worst fates a person can experience, and sadly, housing insecurity and homelessness is a reality for far too many people in Manitoba.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact number of unsheltered people in our province — varying reports peg the number between 1,500 and 4,000 — and quantifying those who are “couch surfing” or one paycheque away from homelessness is nearly impossible.

Equally difficult is determining its root cause. Not enough houses are being built in Canada, with the number falling short each year by at least 140,000 units. This creates downward pressure at the lower end of the market, ultimately creating greater need for social and affordable housing. More to the point, though, it’s an affordability crisis, one that society may have an easier time solving if governments work together to increase supply and address inflation.

Harder to solve is the chronic-ness of it all. I’m talking about the kids who “age out” of foster care without any connection to a place resembling home and end up cycling between homelessness and one government institution after another — hospitals, jails, and, if they’re lucky, disability or addictions treatment facilities. Well over half (possibly closer to three-quarters) of the unsheltered have ties to the CFS system. Even though supports have been extended to youth aging out of care up to the age of 26, along with a $350 monthly shelter benefit, it’s hard to tell if this is enough, and how much time it will take to break the cycle.

Further, many people who live on the street or in bus shelters are experiencing chronic mental health and addictions challenges, often thwarting their chances at being successfully housed. This is where the Housing First model comes in. Some great projects came online in the last few years, particularly ones spearheaded by the Manitoba Métis Federation, the Pollard family, and the “tiny home” village for adults by Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata, to name a few.

So where does government housing fit into this? Apart from funding some of the above-named programs and services, offering rent supplements, and working with non-profit housing providers, the Manitoba government owns 17,000 units of housing stock. Last week, as reported by the Free Press, at least 2,000 of these units are vacant right now, mostly because they are waiting for repairs.

As jaw-dropping as that number may be, to have nearly 12 per cent of units vacant when the waiting list exceeds 5,000, it’s not particularly new. Vacancy rates have fluctuated, but held in that range for at least a decade. Shortly after I became the minister responsible for housing in 2021, my department told me about a plan to rapidly house 50 people in micro-suites that had just been swiftly refurbished. This was fantastic news, I thought, and gave full credit to the hard-working folks in the department along with the social enterprise that helped renovate and furnish these micro-suites. Fifty soon grew to 60, and by late spring, during the midst of the COVID pandemic, nearly 70 people were successfully housed through this initiative.

It was a great story, until you peeled back the layers and asked why the suites were vacant in the first place, and then, why it was that we weren’t as nimble regarding the rest of the vacant housing units.

High turnover is one reason, another being the extent of repairs and maintenance required. In most cases, we’re dealing with housing units that were built between 40 and 50 years ago and heavily lived in ever since. Maintenance budgets have never kept pace and instead turned into a political blame game, as demonstrated by the current housing minister’s statement to the media last week that it was our previous PC government that let social housing fall into disrepair. Except that in 2016 when we formed government, it had already “fallen into disrepair” to the tune of nearly a billion-dollar housing maintenance deficit.

Sadly, these massive deficits in maintenance never get the attention they deserve, not by any government. In comparison to building new schools, creating interchanges on the Perimeter Highway, and finding money for health care, public housing dollars often come up short.

Advocates agree that roughly $100 million is needed in the repair and maintenance budget annually — a figure that my former government finally landed on this past year.

Now the NDP are at the helm, and after seven years of mudslinging, they have the chance to continue, or exceed, the $100-million expenditure. If that happens, the number of vacancies should dramatically decrease and more Manitobans will have a place to call home by this time next year.

That would go much further than any mudslinging ever would.

Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after serving 7 1/2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator whose column appears Tuesdays.

rochelle@rochellesquires.ca