Transition support lacking for new Indigenous residents: Spence survey

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This article was published 25/05/2022 (1241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Indigenous people moving to Winnipeg often face discrimination, housing barriers and trouble navigating the city, according to a new report by a West End non-profit.

The Spence Neighbourhood Association said it put together the document — titled “From House to Home: Safe Spaces for Us” — after it became apparent the neighbourhood needed more transition supports for Indigenous people moving into the area, which has high concentrations of Indigenous and low-income community members.

Most people interviewed in the report moved to Winnipeg for work opportunities not available to them in their home communities or to pursue higher education. Some came to the city to receive medical care and either lost their housing on reserve or weren’t able to return home because of the necessity of consistent care.

Those surveyed pointed to racial bias from landlords, budgeting for security deposits and rent, the increasingly unaffordable housing market and lack of Indigenous-centric transitional resources as barriers to stable, safe living in Winnipeg.

“The results are not necessarily surprising,” Cheryl Starr, lead author on the report, told the Free Press Wednesday.

“As an Indigenous female living in Winnipeg, I have experienced some of the same barriers that the people we interviewed have faced as well, as a renter or as an Indigenous person looking for a place to live in the city.”

There were 37 people interviewed, all of which were Indigenous and live in Winnipeg after moving from their home communities in the past 11 years. The Spence non-profit also received 43 additional surveys taken by Indigenous people living in the West End on their experience looking for and finding housing in the area.

Another survey was designed for 24 community service organizations in the West End to identify what housing and transitional services were being provided and how they were being used.

The report also highlights a large disparity that divides the people who are more successful than others in finding stable housing and supports: those who have existing family members in the city are much more likely to find housing,

“The comparison between the two are actually quite vast,” Starr said. “People who have existing family living in the city are able to navigate, and have support from their family, to navigate some of the systems in place and find resources faster.”

Those who are coming without that support system in place are more likely to experience homelessness and typically take much longer to find stable housing, Starr said.

That gap has to be closed by city and provincially-funded resources, she said.

“There are organizations out there that are doing the work… But there’s not enough people, there’s not enough resources,” Starr said.

“What would help address that is more funding dollars to hire more housing workers and to provide more training to existing organizations, so that they have a greater understanding of some of the things that these people are coming to the city with.”

Spence’s population of just under 4,500 people is 27.4 per cent Indigenous, more than double the Winnipeg-wide average of 12.2 per cent. The neighbourhood is the most economically disadvantaged, with its median household income less than half of the city’s median, and nearly three in four youth under 18 living in low-income households.

Housing is a “critical issue” in the area, the report says. While just under 13 per cent of Winnipeggers live in “housing need” (homes that need major repairs, cost more than one-third of the family’s income or are overcrowded), that number jumps to 40.5 per cent in Spence.

As rent and property values rise in tandem with the rest of the city, being forced to absorb even a slow growth in cost could result in community members being priced out of their own neighbourhood, the association warns.

Report co-author and assistant professor of city planning at the University of Manitoba Sarah Cooper added it’s the responsibility of city planners to create a space for Indigenous Manitobans to express their own housing priorities.

“One of the things that came up in the report is this idea of Indigenous representation in the spaces,” she said. “So how is housing owned and managed by Indigenous people or Indigenous organizations? How are street names selected, how are community organizations or community spaces, how do they reflect Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities?”

The second phase of the project, which will see the association work to put the recommendations from the survey into action, has received $50,000 in funding from the Community Housing Transformation Centre, a nation-wide non-profit that supports affordable housing initiatives.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca