The United Nations distinguishes between absolute and relative homelessness. The former applies to people who completely lack access to stable housing. They might be living on the streets, in squats, or in emergency shelters. Relative homelessness applies to people whose housing fails in some way to meet basic standards. It might be too small, in very poor repair, cost an unsustainble proportion of their income, or they might be "borrowing" housing from others by staying on friends' couches or otherwise doubling up. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation defines "affordable housing" as housing that costs no more than 30% of your income. People who spend more than 50% of their income on housing are at high risk of homelessness.
There is evidence that both absolute and relative homelessness have a negative impact on the health of individuals, as well as on things that are more difficult to measure like identity, self-esteem, social engagement, and ability to exert power in community.
Both absolute and relative homelessness can have health implications, and both erode an individual's ability to function in and contribute to society. According to Article 11 of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (to which Canada is signatory), "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself [sic] and his [sic] family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions."
In Ontario, social assistance for people younger than 65 years is provided under two programs, Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). OW is equivalent to "welfare" or "workfare". ODSP who are unable to work because of disability. Some people on disability also receive Canada Pension Plan Disability payments.
OW was cut by 21.6% in 1995, and has not been increased since then. ODSP was not cut, but it has not increased since the early 1990s. Inflation means that prices go up every year, but the income of the poorest members of society remains the same so, in effect, they are less able to purchase the things they need with every passing year.
Minimum wage in Ontario is $6.85 an hour. It has not increased since the mid 1990s.
A single person on OW has a gross income of $520. In October 2000 the average vacant market rent of a bachelor apartment was $440. The "nutritious food basket" costs for a single man 19-25 were $174.53. That means that even basic food and shelter costs were beyond the means of a single OW recipient, let alone things like transportation, medical expenses, clothes, and recreation.
A family of four living on one, full time, minimum wage salary has $1187.33 in employment income and top-up from social assistance. If you factor in certain tax benefits and payroll taxes, the total income for the family is $1421.73. The average vacant market rent of a three bedroom apartment is $875. The "nutritious food basket" for this family would cost $509.55 per month. That leaves a grand total of $37.18 to pay for transportation, medical expenses, clothes, school supplies for the kids, and recreation.
The gap between rich and poor in this country has been growing. See the section on Local Numbers" for Hamilton-specific stats showing this increase between 1995 and 1999. Previous studies have shown that it also occurred between 1991 and 1995.
Rents are going up. The median, vacant market rent of a one-bedroom apartment was $475 in October 1994, $482 in October 1997, and $549 in October 2000. The median, vacant market rent of a three-bedroom apartment was $790 in October 1994, $804 in October 1997, and $850 in October 2000.
There is less housing. An annual survey done by Hamilton's Housing Help Centre found over a thousand vacant apartments listed in the Spectator in the early 1990s, still more than 500 in 2000, and only 309 in October of 2001. Only a few years ago, Hamilton's vacancy rate was above 3%, and it is now 1.3%--housing experts say that between 2% and 3% is healthy for a rental housing market.
The supply of housing is not increasing because building low income housing is not profitable for private capital, and nobody has built any social housing in the city since the early to mid 1990s.
Between 1994 and 1998 in Hamilton, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation lists an average of 18 new rental units constructed per year, but an increase of about 400 tenant families per year. The only apartment buildings built in the city in the last decade were two buildings built on Walnut Street by the municipality. All units in those apartments are market rent units.
Numbers from the last census for which data are available indicate that 47% of tenant households in Hamilton pay above the CMHC affordability criterion, i.e. pay more than 30% of their income on rent. About 23% of tenant households pay more than half of their income on rent, putting them at significant risk of homelessness.
Passage of the misnamed Tenant Protection Act in 1998 by the provincial government allowed landlords to raise the rents of inhabited units by approximately 3% per year, and removed all limits to the rent of vacant units. It also made eviction easier.
At the most basic level, homelessness is cause by a lack of fit between the cost of housing and the ability of people to purchase housing. Nowhere, at any point in history, has an advanced capitalist market produced enough housing that was adequate, safe, and affordable (using the CMHC's definitions of those terms) to satisfy the need without intervention.
Research in Hamilton, in Toronto, and elsewhere in Canada has shown that both factors are important contributors to the problem of homelessness. For a significant chunk of the population, incomes are too low. As well, housing prices are too high.
Social housing programs were initiated by the federal government in the years following World War II. The federal government began to extract itself from social housing programs in the mid 1980s. Over the term of the Mulroney Conservatives, the feds cut more than $2 billion from housing programs, and just before they left office they cancelled them completely. For a brief period, the province continued to build social housing, but in 1995, the Harris Conservatives dropped all plans to construct new social housing. The Chretien government downloaded responsibility for housing to the provinces, and last year the province downloaded all administrative responsibility for social housing to the municipality.
Canada is the only rich, overdeveloped country that does not have a national housing program.
The stereotypical homeless person is an unemployed, middle aged, single man with mental health issues or a substance abuse problem. This stereotype is complete and utter nonsense.
Familes, women, and youth are becoming much more common in the homeless population. The Good Shepherd's HOMES program, for people who are homeless and psychiatric survivors, found that the gender split was about equal. There are individuals who are full time university students that currently depend on Hamilton's shelter system.
Local shelter providers report that about 20-40% of the people who use their shelters have jobs of some kind. Statistics from Peel Region indicate that at least 20% of people in their shelter system have FULL TIME jobs.
While a variety of personal factors can contribute to homelessness, the single largest overriding factor is poverty. While it occasionally happens that the upper middle class professional who loses their job might end up on the street, that is rare. Most often, it is people who grew up poor and live poor, and have some sort of specific, short term difficulty that forces them onto the street. The same difficulty would not usually result in middle class people losing their housing. Many U.S. and international studies have found that people who are homeless and mentally ill were typically born into poor families. People who are born into middle or upper income families and develop mental illness are much less likely to end up on the streets.
While there are people who lack housing who have problems around substance abuse, there is no evidence that alcohol consumption amongst homeless people, for example, is any higher than amongst middle class people.
A study in Toronto looked at the circumstance immediately preceding loss of housing for people on the street. The single largest factor, at 45%, was loss of employment. Second, at 26%, was domestic violence. Only after that came mental illness.
A study by New York University tracked hundreds of homeless families in New York and found that, regardless of why they were homeless to begin with, "Housing is the best cure for homelessness." That was the headline for the article, and it _should_ be patently obvious to everyone.
In March of 2001, approximately 260 people used overnight emergency shelter and hostel services per night in Hamilton, up from 175 people in March 2000.
At the end of January 2002, ther were approximately 3900 people on the waiting list for social housing in Hamilton. Depending on what part of the city people want to live in, the waiting list can range from 1 year to 4 or 5 years.
Low income in the area encompassed by the new city of Hamilton is experienced
by 21.9% of people, but the rates are higher among particular subgroups. Not surprisingly, those with higher rates of low income are groups that are traditionally marginalized in our society.
Women -- 24%
Immigrants -- 25%
Youth (15 to 24 yrs.) -- 26%
Older adults (75+ years) -- 32%
People with disabilities -- 35%
Racialized people -- 41%
Unemployed people -- 41%
Recent immigrants (since 1990) -- 50%
First Nations people -- 50%
Groups with greater incidence of low income are also at increased risk of experiencing homelessness.
The gap between rich and poor is increasing. The number of census families in both very high and very low income brackets increased between 1995 and 1999. The number of lone parent families with an income of less than $10,000 per year increased by 62%, while the number of lone parent families with an income of more than $60,000 increased by 61%. Similar patterns are seen with two-parent families.
At least 3,100 Hamiltonians with disabilities who receive their income from the Ontario Disability Support Program pay more than 50% of their income on rent, putting them at high risk of homelessness. Only 41% of people on Ontario Works (OW), the provincial welfare system, had their rent covered by the shelter allowance portion of OW.