Supportive housing in Ottawa

La version française de ce billet se trouve ici.

I recently served as a subject matter expert for an audit of supportive housing undertaken by the City of Ottawa’s Office of the Auditor General. The full report on the audit is available here.

Here are 10 things know:

1. The audit’s focus was single-site supportive housing (sometimes known as place-based supportive housing). In other words, it considered buildings in Ottawa where all tenants have a specific set of needs and require wrapround support (i.e., social work) rather than buildings where just a portion of tenants are in that situation.

2. A lack of guaranteed, long-term operating funding was found to be a challenge. In the words of the report: “The City receives capital funding from the federal and provincial governments; however, these levels of government do not provide additional operating funding tied to capital projects.” Municipal officials then have to try to secure the operating funding needed to operate the housing.

3. A lack of operating funding can mean some clients don’t receive the wrapround supports (i.e., social work supports) they need, once they are housed. In the words of the report, the limited operating funding that is in place “only covers a limited number of staff and it was indicated by service providers that case loads can be difficult to manage, resulting in fewer touchpoints with clients and delays in providing the supports they need.”

4. In other cases, the supportive housing provider has had to serve a different group of tenants than what was originally anticipated. In the words of the report: “We learned through the audit that, recently, some supportive housing facilities did not get the expected health funding they were seeking and had to change the program admissions to align with funding being made available. More specifically, the targeted acuity level had to be changed from high to low/moderate as they did not receive the funding required to be able to provide the necessary health supports for clients with more complex needs.”

5. A lack of operating funding also means that some high-acuity clients simply do not get housed. Or in the words of the report, “there are individuals with more complex needs who may remain homeless as supportive housing agencies are not able to support them.”

6. All of this can result in more chronic homelessness. In the words of the report: “A supportive housing facility intended to house high acuity clients but ultimately only being able to house individuals with lower/moderate acuity could result in this demographic remaining chronically homeless.”

7. In the Ontario context, a lack of operating funding can put significant financial pressure on the local municipality. In the words of the report: “We learned from service providers that they do not consistently have sufficient funds for the required repairs of their facilities and, at times, have needed to come to the City to request additional funding to address the damage. This creates additional pressure on the City to find the funding in its already stretched budgets.”

8. While not the focus of this audit, we learned that community housing providers in Ottawa are also struggling with complex clients. Community housing in general typically doesn’t have a specific mandate to housing complex clients (e.g., persons who have experienced long-term homelessness). Nevertheless, many of their tenants do require various forms of wraparound (i.e., social work) support. Inadequate wrapround supports provided to community housing tenants in Ottawa (and elsewhere) often results in harm to tenants, damages to units, and more EMS calls.

9. Not only does that create challenges for both tenants and providers; it can also lead to more homelessness. In reference to challenges in the community housing sector, the audit found that, for some tenants, “the challenges eventually lead to eviction and potentially entering or re-entering the homelessness system.”

10. The issues raised in this report are relevant to many other communities. A lack of operating funding for both supportive housing and community housing (not to mention a lack of such units to begin with) is a major challenge across Canada. While this audit did not make recommendations to the Government of Canada, it’s reasonable to suggest that any update to our National Housing Strategy should try to account for the many challenges discussed in this audit.

In sum. This audit, while focused on single-site supportive housing in Ottawa, is relevant to the affordable housing discussion broadly throughout Canada. It makes important recommendations, all of which have been accepted (and all of which are outlined here).

I wish to thank Jenny Morrow and Annick Torfs for assistance with this blog post.