Saskatchewan budget misses opportunity on rental housing assistance

by admin | May 2, 2018 | Aboriginal Peoples, Health Care, Homeless, Housing, Income, Income Distribution, Income Support, Labour Market, Oil and Gas, Potash, Poverty, Resources, Social Policy, Unemployment

Saskatchewan budget misses opportunity on rental housing assistance

I recently wrote a ‘top 10’ overview blog post about the 2018 Saskatchewan budget. Following on the heels of that, I’ve now written an opinion piece about the budget’s announcement of a phase out a rental assistance program for low-income households.

Points raised in the opinion piece include the following:

-Across Saskatchewan, rental vacancy rates are unusually high right now, making this a good time to provide rental assistance to tenants for use in private units (indeed, right now it’s a so-called renter’s market in Saskatchewan, meaning it’s a relatively good time for tenants to negotiate rental agreements with private landlords).

-Thus, rather than phasing out the program, it would have been sensible to have expanded it.

-Phasing it out will very possibly lead to more homelessness, which in turn may lead lead to higher public costs elsewhere (especially to the health care sector).

Interestingly, just yesterday the Saskatchewan Landlord Association made many of these same points themselves; they like the rental assistance program, as it increases demand for its members’ housing units (many of which are currently sitting empty).

It’s of course also important for government to finance housing owned by non-profit entities. I recently wrote about the importance of a variety of measures to improve housing affordability in the housing chapter of this year’s Alternative Federal Budget.

Meanwhile, the link to my recent opinion piece is here.

Ten Things to Know About Social Assistance in Alberta

by admin | Jul 24, 2017 | Alberta, Ending Homelessness, Government, Point in time Count, Poverty, Research and Data, Ron Kneebone, Social Assistance, Social Housing

Ten Things to Know About Social Assistance in Alberta

This is part two of a two-part blog series on social assistance. Part one, which looks at social assistance across Canada, can be accessed here.

As recently noted by my colleague Rachel Campbell, last fall’s Point-in-Time (PiT) Count of persons experiencing homelessness across Alberta yielded interesting findings pertaining to social assistance. The report found that a mere 7% of persons experiencing homelessness in Calgary indicated that “welfare/income assistance” was one of their sources of income; across the rest of Alberta, meanwhile, the average was 29%.

On April 20, Calgary Homeless Foundation convened a community panel discussion in the hope of uncovering potential reasons for this discrepancy. Panel members were Andrew Joo (Calgary Drop-In), Simon Lai (Woods Homes) and Ellie Hall (Calgary Legal Guidance).[1]

Here are 10 things to know:

It’s always been challenging for households to qualify for—and maintain—social assistance in Alberta. Major reasons for this include: governments wanting to spend less money, policy makers fearing that social assistance receipt will make gainful employment less attractive, and elected officials (and their constituents) believing that unemployed persons have themselves to blame for their misfortune. (None of these points are limited to Alberta; all of this was discussed in Part 1 of the present blog series.)
In 1986, the Edmonton Social Planning Council published a controversial document. The Other Welfare Manual was an advocacy document that helped low-income individuals (and their advocates) navigate Alberta’s social assistance system. It was updated multiple times and soon became controversial, in part because it made it more challenging for social assistance officials to deny benefits to households. Intake workers were told by their supervisors that they could refuse to see clients who wanted to bring the manual into the intake interview.
In the 1990s, rules for social assistance receipt in Alberta became harsher and benefit levels were reduced. Social assistance administrators began to put an intense focus on ensuring recipients looked for gainful employment. It subsequently became more difficult for people to be deemed eligible for social assistance. As I’ve written before: “a ‘single employable adult’ without dependents received almost $9,000 annually in 1992 (that figure includes tax credits); by 2007, this figure had shrunk to less than $6,000.”[2]
Since that time, it’s been even more difficult for people to access social assistance throughout the province. For example, previously mothers were not considered “employable” until their youngest child was in school. This policy changed to a policy stipulating that mothers should look for work as soon as their youngest child turned two. According to Ellie Hall (Calgary Legal Guidance): “Until recently [when Alberta Works was in the news for forcing clients to stand in the cold waiting in line for an appointment with an intake worker] clients could not schedule an intake appointment. They could only start lining up outside the office, sometimes for hours, and were still often turned away and told to come back another day and start over” (personal communication, May 2, 2017).
Across Alberta municipalities, it’s possible that there are discrepancies in the way social assistance offices interpret rules and administer benefits. Clients and front-line workers often report that rules are not always interpreted consistently across offices. It may be that some Calgary offices are stricter in dealing with persons experiencing homelessness than are offices in other Alberta cities (such inter-office variability may also exist in Canada’s other provinces and territories.)
In Alberta, persons experiencing homelessness are not eligible to receive certain forms of social assistance. They can qualify for Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH), but not for Alberta Works; the former is for persons with permanent, severe disabilities, while the latter is not (yet, both are forms of social assistance). At one time, individuals living in a homeless shelter could access some Alberta Works benefits money each month; but today, they receive nothing directly from Alberta Works until they find a permanent address (however, the services provided to them by the shelter likely benefit from some provincial funding). This is not the case in all provinces. For example, Quebec lets clients in homeless shelters access the equivalent of Alberta Works.
Earlier this year, the Alberta government streamlined the AISH application process. More information on these changes can be found here (and a CBC News story can be found here). This move happened in response to criticism from the provincial auditor general. However, it’s not yet clear how much of an impact this will have in practice or how it will impact people experiencing homelessness. It’s also important to note that AISH benefit levels are higher than comparable programs in other provinces; see point #8 of this previous post.
Even though the cost of rental housing is substantially higher in Calgary than in other Alberta municipalities, social assistance benefit levels are the same across the entire province. One possible reason for this is that the cost of rent should not be the only variable used to assess cost of living—other important variables include the cost of transportation, food and fuel (and in some Alberta communities, those costs may be greater than in Calgary).[3] In other provinces and territories, benefit levels do vary by jurisdiction, in part to reflect the higher cost of living in more remote areas of that province or territory. This is the case in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and all three territories.[4] In this recent presentation, Ron Kneebone and Margarita Wilkins argue that social assistance benefits levels in Alberta should vary by municipality.
When it comes to the percentage of each city’s homeless population receiving social assistance, one factor that may help explain the discrepancy between Calgary and the rest of Alberta may be labour market attachment. As Rachel Campbell noted in her recent blog post, results of last fall’s PiT Count found a discrepancy between Calgary and the rest of Alberta in terms of individuals experiencing homelessness indicating “employment” as a source of income. In Calgary, 33% of respondents indicated “employment” as a source of income, compared with fewer than 10% in the rest of the province. Since it’s harder for persons who are gainfully employed to receive social assistance, it would be logical if this explains much of the discrepancy between rates of social assistance receipt among persons experiencing homelessness in Calgary versus other Alberta cities.
Today, the Alberta government is under considerable political pressure to control spending. For 2017-18, the provincial government is forecasting a $10.3 billion deficit. And for 2018-19, its target is a $9.7 billion deficit. At the same time, the job vacancy picture looks bleak, and social assistance caseloads are rising (you can read about this here and here).

In Sum. The question asked at the outset of this two-part blog series was: “Why do a smaller percentage of persons experiencing homelessness in Calgary receive social assistance than their counterparts in other Alberta cities?” I offer three possible answers to this question: 1) It’s always been difficult for anyone to access social assistance in Alberta, as is the case in every Canadian province and territory; 2) higher rates of employment among people experiencing homelessness in Calgary may explain why a smaller percentage of Calgary’s homeless population accesses social assistance; and 3) variations in how staff from one office to another interpret social assistance eligibility rules may also help explain the discrepancy between Calgary and other cities.

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for invaluable assistance with this blog post: Rachel Campbell, Hilary Chapple, Louise Gallagher, Ellie Hall, Coleen Hutton, Andrew Joo, Nigel Kirk, Kara Layher, Lindsay Lenny, John Stapleton, Anne Tweddle, Donna Wood and one anonymous reviewer. Any errors lie with the author.

You can view a PDF version of this blog post here: Ten Things to Know About Social Assistance in Alberta

[1] Multiple attempts were made—via official channels—to have a Government of Alberta official also participate on the panel. Regrettably, none of those attempts proved fruitful.

[2] All of these figures are expressed in 2015 constant dollars.

[3] For a succinct overview of a recent attempt to calculate the cost-of-living variation across Alberta communities, see this report; and for more detail, see this web link.

[4] In the words of my colleague, John Stapleton: “I don’t think any jurisdiction has a good rationale for its rates. They are historical rather than rational and reflect a massive elixir of compounds that seldom make sense. Every so often, a province or territory will compare and set rates according to some external standard like the consumer price index or cost of items. It seldom lasts long” (personal communication, April 30, 2017).

Book review: Understanding spatial media

by admin | Jul 5, 2017 | Data Sharing, Determinants of Homelessness, Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Research and Data, Technology

Book review: Understanding spatial media

Rob Kitchin, Tracey Lauriault and Matthew Wilson recently co-edited a book titled Understanding Spatial Media. Published by SAGE, this book is about technology, power, people, democracy and geography.

Here are 10 things to know about the book.

1. The book can help us make better decisions pertaining to the acquisition and use of technology and data. Technological advancements happen quickly; this book encourages the reader to think carefully about these changes. It encourages us to think sociologically and technologically at the same time. That’s because technology isn’t neutral; there are politics and values embedded within it. We shape technology, which in turn shapes us.

2. This book matters because homelessness is inherently geographical. As an example, many households currently experiencing homelessness in Calgary used to live in First Nations communities. Understanding what’s driving their ‘flow in’ to Calgary’s Homeless-Serving System of Care is an important part of understanding homelessness in Calgary. Across Canada, rates of child poverty are much higher ‘on reserve’ than ‘off reserve.’ The visual below, taken from this report, makes that point quite clear.

3. The book is relevant to Point-in-Time (PiT) Counts of homelessness. Chapter 21 is about spatial profiling; it looks at the action of classifying people and then acting according to that classification. As noted by Calgary Homeless Foundation’s CEO, Diana Krecsy: “The language we use in PiT Counts gets translated into policy discussions.” For example, if communities choose to start counting veterans experiencing homelessness (as has happened in many Canadian communities over the past several years) it can translate into more attention being focused on the housing needs of veterans (which I would argue has also happened).[1] Indeed, categories and definitions used in PiT Counts are not value neutral.

4. Chapter 4, “Digitally Augmented Geographies,” highlights important differences in Internet accessibility globally. Authored by Mark Graham, I found this chapter very readable. Points raised in the chapter include the fact that approximately one-quarter of the world’s population “has still never used the internet” (p. 46). The chapter further notes that, of the approximately 3 billion people in the world who do use the Internet, “many are forced to use it in very restricted ways because of economic necessity (e.g. metered plans, bandwidth caps), technical limitations (e.g. slow connectivity speeds) and government restrictions (e.g. censorship or surveillance)” (p. 46). This is relevant for persons experiencing homelessness, and it’s especially relevant to northern regions of Canada; it’s also an important advocacy area for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.[2]

5. Chapter 5, “Locative and Sousveillant Media,” discusses the use of smartphones to capture things on video…including things that weren’t intended to be captured on video. Readers learn that approximately two-thirds of the world’s population keeps a smartphone “within arms reach [sic] at all times, reaching for it 150 times per day…” (p. 57). The same chapter includes a discussion of people whipping out their phones and catching ‘incidents of interest’ on video—for me, this brought to mind a May 2017 incident in which a Toronto security guard was caught on camera while throwing objects at a man experiencing homelessness.

6. Chapter 7, titled “Urban Dashboards,” discusses a topic that is very relevant to my work at the Calgary Homeless Foundation (CHF). It notes that, since roughly 1990, the term “dashboard” has denoted “a screen giving a graphical summary of various types of information, typically used to give an overview of (part of) a business organization” (p. 75). It further notes: “Business and urban data displays often mimic the dashboard instrumentation of cards or aeroplanes. Where in a car you would find indicators for speed, oil and fuel levels, here you will find widgets representing an organization’s ‘key performance indicators’: cash flow, stocks, inventory and so forth” (p. 77). Below, readers can see an excerpt from a Calgary community dashboard.

This image is an excerpt from a Calgary community dashboard measuring collective impact on specific goals pertaining to homelessness to reach by the end of 2018.

7. Several of the book’s chapters are relevant to research currently being done at CHF. CHF is currently doing some ‘GIS mapping’ research. For clients receiving CHF-funded housing, we’re looking at the postal codes where they came from (before entering Calgary’s Homeless-Serving System of Care) as well as postal codes of the housing units where they end up (once we help house them). Similar research is discussed at various junctures of the book. The book’s co-editor, Dr. Tracey Lauriault, recently explained: “One of aims of the book in general is to give you the ‘critical thinking chops’ needed to do GIS mapping research.”

8. The book touches on many of the same issues discussed at the Canadian Homelessness Data Sharing Initiative. This annual event, co-hosted by CHF and the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, discusses infrastructure (i.e. where to store data); modeling and schemas (i.e. rules related to a classification system); analytics (i.e. the use of techniques, statistics and software), access to data, sensitivity (i.e. respecting people); linked data; and transparency. All of these topics are discussed in the book. (I’ve previously blogged about the inaugural data-sharing event here, and I’ve recently blogged about the second annual event here).

9. The authors who contributed to this book represent a diverse collection of scholars.Scholars from 18 universities, spanning six countries, participated in the effort. This is indicative of some impressive professional networking on the part of the book’s three editors—they opened a tent and let a lot of thinkers come inside it. This serves readers well.

10. This book is geared mostly to other researchers in geography and media studies. Most of the book’s intended readers are university professors and upper-level university students. I personally had great difficulty understanding several of the chapters. I even found Chapter 1 to be very difficult (it uses the words ontogenetic, neogeography, multivocal, geovisual and synoptic). I would therefore not recommend this book to people who lack prior knowledge in the realm of spatial media.

I wish to thank the following individuals for invaluable assistance with this blog post: Vicki Ballance, Rachel Campbell, Chantal Hansen, Patrick Hunter, Diana Krecsy, Tracey Lauriault, Kara Layher, Michael Lenczner, Lindsay Lenny and Joel Sinclair. Any errors are mine.

[1] For examples of recent attention to veterans’ homelessness in Canada, see this this Globe and Mail article and this PowerPoint presentation. (I suspect that a variety of factors, not just PIT Counts, have likely led to increased policy attention on veterans’ homelessness in Canada over the past several years.)

[2] You can download a “pre-publication version” of this chapter here, free of charge. You can check out Professor Graham’s web site here, and you can see his contributions to The Guardian here.

You can view a PDF version of this blog post here: Book review- Understanding spatial media

Public Policy and Homelessness: The Case of Calgary

by admin | Feb 21, 2017 | Alberta, Big City Charter, Chidom Otogwu, Determinants of Homelessness, Ending Homelessness, Housing, Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Ron Kneebone, Social Housing

Public Policy and Homelessness: The Case of Calgary

On January 24, I gave a presentation to students at the University of Calgary as part of the Certificate in Working with Homeless Populations program. The goal of this presentation was to convey the fact that public policy strongly impacts the number of homeless people in a given jurisdiction at any particular time.

A version of my PowerPoint slides, which are chock-full of visuals and references, can be downloaded here: Falvo Public Policy and Homelessness WHP 1 of 3

This is Part 1 of a 3-part presentation I gave that day. A blog post based on Part 2 can be found here, while a blog post based on Part 3 can be found here.

Here are 10 things to know:

1. Federal spending in Canada fell drastically from the early 1990s until the mid-2000s. In the early 1990s, federal spending (not counting intergovernmental transfers) represented 19% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By the late-2000s, that figure had dropped to about 13%. That’s a remarkably sharp drop in such a short time.

2. Taxation fell sharply in Canada between the mid-1990s and the late-2000s. Looking at annual tax revenue expressed as a percentage of GDP (all orders of government combined) tax revenue in Canada represented 36% of GDP in the late-1990s. By 2012, that figure had dropped to below 31%. What’s more, Canada’s level of taxation was considerably above the average for OECD countries in the mid-1990s; today, our taxation level is well below the OECD average.

3. Federal spending on housing decreased substantially beginning in the early 1990s. In light of the trends discussed in points #1 and #2 above, this comes as little surprise to most people. For more on the federal role in housing policy, including a look at how it has evolved over the past several decades, see this 2013 conference paper.

4. Rental housing production in Canada fell sharply beginning in the late 1970s. This happened in part due to reductions in public spending on housing discussed in point #3 above. Other factors that likely led to this drop include high interest rates (which made it expensive for developers to finance new supply), a shrinking middle class (which resulted in less demand for rental units), provincial legislation pertaining to condominiums, and rent regulation.[1]

5. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Alberta government began spending substantially less on housing.This decrease was drastic. Indeed, in 1995, the Alberta government devoted an amount worth 0.36% of its GDP to housing; just five years later, this amount had shrunk to a mere 0.10%. The Alberta government’s annual spending on housing didn’t start to increase again until the early 2000s.

6. In 1993, the Alberta government introduced strict reforms to social assistance. This entailed at least two things. First, the rules changed, meaning that provincial officials made it much more difficult for Albertans to qualify for social assistance. Second, the annual value of benefit levels for those who did qualify for social assistance dropped quite suddenly (and then continued to erode over time). Indeed, a ‘single employable adult’ without dependents received almost $9,000 annually in 1992 (that figure includes tax credits); by 2007, this figure had shrunk to less than $6,000[2] That’s a very sharp loss in annual income for a very low-income individual.

7. Alberta has much less rental housing than other provinces, and this gap has grown in the past 25 years. In 1990, Alberta had almost as many apartment rental units (on a per capita basis) as the rest of Canada. Then, beginning in the early 1990s, the amount of apartment rentals in Alberta started to decrease; today, Alberta has just half the number of apartment rental units (per capita) as the rest of Canada. There are three main reasons for this: the first being, historically, Alberta experienced higher rates of in-migration than other provinces; secondly, the Alberta government was not as keen as other provinces to subsidize housing for lower-income households; and lastly, Alberta has a relatively large number of high-income households (and higher-income households typically prefer to own than rent).

8. Calgary has much less rental housing than Edmonton, and this gap has grown since the mid-1990s. Beginning in the early 1990s, the number of rental housing units (per capita) in both Edmonton and Calgary started to drop each year; and it dropped more sharply in Calgary than in Edmonton. Today, Calgary has approximately half the number of rental units as Edmonton on a per-capita basis.

9. The many public policy factors raised above helped create the ‘perfect storm’ for a very sharp rise in homelessness in Calgary beginning in the mid-1990s. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, homelessness in Calgary saw very rapid growth. For example, according to analysis done with Point-in-Time Count methodology, it grew by almost 700% (per capita) during that time. And while it’s always hard for researchers to establish causation (see point #2 of this blog post) it can reasonably be inferred that the public policy changes discussed above played a major role in this increase.

10. In 2008, Calgary became the first Canadian city to develop a plan to ‘end homelessness’; since that time, homelessness in Calgary has decreased. There are three main reasons for that decrease. First, since 2008, a great deal of progress has been made at the community level in Calgary (I’ve previously discussed the very important role played by the Calgary Homeless Foundation as System Planner here). Second, benefit levels for Alberta social assistance recipients have increased since 2008. For example, total annual income received by a ‘single employable’ household receiving social assistance jumped by more than 30% in 2009; and total annual income for a single adult receiving Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped increased by 30% between 2011 and 2013. Third, Calgary’s rental vacancy rate is very high right now (an indirect result of the drop in the price of oil).

In Sum: The intended ‘take away’ from the presentation is that, homelessness is a complex issue that requires a coordinated and collective response that addresses the local issues through local responses. When it comes to ending homelessness, a community plan that is focused on increasing coordination and collaboration across a system of care and greater integration with big system public service providers is vital. For agencies at the frontline, having a System Planner, such as the Calgary Homeless Foundation, providing the big picture view and coordination matters a great deal… and so too does public policy.

I wish to thank: Rachel Campbell, Louise Gallagher, Ron Kneebone, Kara Layher, Lindsay Lenny, Chidom Otogwu, Steve Pomeroy, Joel Sinclair, John Stapleton, Greg Suttor, Alina Turner and Donna Wood for assistance with this. Any errors are mine.

[1] This is not to suggest that rent regulation doesn’t play an important role in regulating landlord-tenant relations. For more on this, see this recent analysis.

[2] Both figures in this paragraph are expressed in 2015 constant dollars.

For a PDF version of the present blog post, please click here: Public Policy and Homelessness,The Case of Calgary

Ten Things to Know About Federal Income Support for Low-Income Seniors in Canada

by admin | Aug 25, 2016 | Income Inequality, Poverty

Ten Things to Know About Federal Income Support for Low-Income Seniors in Canada

Prepared by Allan Moscovitch, Professor, Carleton University; Nick Falvo, Director of Research & Data at the Calgary Housing Foundation; and David Macdonald, Senior Economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

In the latest edition of How Ottawa Spends, we have a chapter titled “The Federal Government and Old Age Security: Then, Now, and the Future.” The focus of our chapter was the potential impact of the Harper government’s decision to move the age of eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) benefits from 65 to 67.

This change had been announced by the Harper government in the 2012 federal budget; it was to start to take effect in 2023. The Trudeau Liberals promised in their recent election platform to notgo ahead with the change; and after the election they did announce they would return the age of qualification for the OAS back to 65.

A recent report by Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office has resulted in some debate as to the wisdom of the Trudeau government changing the age of eligibility for OAS from 67 back to 65.

With all of this in mind, here are 10 things to know about federal income support for seniors in Canada:

The first income-support program for low-income seniors in Canada was called the Old Age Pension. This program took effect in 1927, when the Old Age Pensions Act was passed. Labour unrest after World War I had helped bring this about; there were general strikes all over Canada (including the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 and a bitter strike in Cape Breton in 1925). Initially, the federal government would cost-share (50:50) this means-tested pension plan with those provincial governments which chose to participate. A few years later, this changed to a 75:25 fed-prov split to induce more provinces to join. From the outset, the program was administered by provincial governments.
Over time, income support for seniors became more generous. When the 1927 legislation was passed, an individual had to be 70 years of age or older in order to qualify. The individual also had to have an assessed annual income of less than $5,120 (in 2015 dollars) at the time of receipt. The maximum pension a single person could receive was $3,370/yr (in 2015 dollars). Beginning in 1947, the maximum annual pension that a single person could receive, in 2015 dollars, was $9,200.
Initially, Indians^[1] who had status under the Indian Act were explicitly excluded from receiving a pension under the 1927 legislation. The attitude of the federal government at the time was the Indigenous peoples should leave the reserve and stop being Aboriginal. If they left the reserve, they could qualify for an Old Age Pension. To do that, they had to renounce their Aboriginal status and become a British subject (Canadian citizenship didn’t exist until 1947).
In 1951, major changes were made to this program and it became known as Old Age Security (OAS). In 1951, the Old Age Security Act and the Old Age Assistance Act were both passed, providing the legislative basis for a new pension program that came into being in 1952. The former provided for a pension at age 70 while the latter provided for a pension for people 65 to 69 and in need. In 1952, the provinces agreed to a constitutional amendment that permitted the federal government to administer the program. This entire program was financed 100% federally; there would now be no provincial money involved.
With the 1951 changes, members of First Nations were now eligible for benefits. This reflected changes in attitudes after World War II; the public began to realize that returning Indigenous war veterans were not eligible for social welfare benefits that were available to the rest of Canada’s population.
In the mid-1960s, major changes were made to the OAS. Beginning in 1965, the OAS would now be one program for people over the age of 65. By this time, the system included a supplement, cost shared 50:50 with the provinces, that would be available to some seniors between the ages of 65 and 69. In 1966, the OAS was made available (universally) to anyone 65 and older. This had the effect of setting a standard for the age of retirement in Canada.
Today’s OAS system serves 5.5 million Canadians; its current annual cost is $35 billion, or about 13% of total spending by Canada’s federal government. As of May 2015, the full OAS was $6,800/yr. That full amount is available to Canadians with annual incomes below $71,592. Today, low-income seniors who received the OAS can also apply for the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). The maximum GIS benefit for a single adult is $766/month, or $9,200/year. In the case of GIS recipients who continue to work, the GIS is ‘clawed back’ at the rate of 50 cents for every dollar of income. About 1.8 million Canadians receive the GIS today. This costs Canada’s federal government almost $11 billion/yr.
With the OAS/GIS system in place, there is substantially less poverty among seniors than there would be if the system were not in place. Using the after-tax Low Income Measure (LIM), an individual or household is ‘in poverty’ if their income is less than 50% of the median income. In 1976, almost 23% of seniors households fell below the LIM; by 1996, this number had declined to a mere 3%. OAS and GIS are almost certainly responsible for much of this decline.The Canada Pension Plan (CPP)/Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) is also having the effect of lowering the poverty rate for seniors. Once Canadians reach the age of 65 and receive income from OAS, GIS and/or CPP their poverty rate (as measured by the LIM) drops very substantially. For example, 37% of single females aged 64 in Canada live in poverty; among 65 year-old single females, the rate is just 21%.
Since 2003, the percentage of elderly Canadians in poverty, as measured by the LIM, has risen back up to almost 10%. That’s largely because the LIM is set at 50% of median income adjusted for family size; and since 2003, the median incomes of Canadians have increased in real terms. Meanwhile, lower income seniors rely mostly on OAS/GIS and the CPP/QPP. OAS/GIS is indexed to the Consumer Prince Index (CPI) only (i.e. not to wages and not median income). The CPP/QPP you get in the year you retire is tied to average wages; but after you retire, your CPP/QPP increases by CPI only…so you fall relative to median incomes of the general population.
Our chapter argues that, if the change in OAS eligibility were to happen, the percentage of Canadians aged 65 and 66 living in poverty would increase substantially. We made these calculations with the help of Statistics Canada’s Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (note: David Macdonald is a whiz at this!). Many of those aged 65 and 66 not getting OAS/GIS would likely continue receiving social assistancebenefits; and social assistance benefits are not as generous as the combination of OAS/GIS benefits. For example, a single senior with no other income currently has access to just over $17,000 annually from OAS and GIS; but as a social assistance recipient, the same person would receive between $7,000 and $11,000 per year (depending on the province)—or $6,000 and $16,000 in the territories. What’s more, social assistance is funded by provincial governments, meaning that the proposed changed would offload spending from the federal government onto provincial governments.

Frances Abele and Richard Shillington have been very helpful in the preparation of this blog post. Any errors are our own.

[1] The term “First Nation” was not used until relatively recently.

Ten Things to Know About Homelessness in Canada

by admin | Sep 15, 2015 | Aboriginal Peoples, Alberta, Canada, Cities, Demographics, Employment, Employment Insurance, Fiscal policy, Homeless, Housing, Income, Income Support, Indigenous peoples, Labour Market, Macroeconomics, municipalities, Nunavut, Ontario, population aging, Poverty, seniors, Social Policy, taxation, Toronto, Unemployment

Ten Things to Know About Homelessness in Canada

This afternoon I gave a presentation at Raising the Roof’s Child & Family Homelessness Stakeholder Summit in Toronto. My slide deck can be downloaded here. To accompany the presentation, I’ve prepared the following list of Ten Things to Know About Homelessness in Canada.

1.Efforts to enumerate persons experiencing homeless have generally been spotty, but it is reasonable to assert that homelessness in Canada saw substantial growth in the 1980s and 1990s. On a nightly basis in Toronto, there were about 1,000 persons per night staying in emergency shelters in 1980. By 1990, that figure had doubled. And ten years later, there were 4,000 persons per night staying in Toronto’s emergency shelters. The Toronto figure of 4,000 per night has remained relatively constant for the past 15 years, though it has edged up in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 recession a phenomenon which I’ve previously written about here. (Admittedly, the number of persons living in emergency shelters on a nightly basis is a rather narrow gauge of homelessness. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, approximately 13% of Canadian households are in core housing need; for Nunavut, the figure is a whopping 39%.)

2. Though it’s difficult to establish causation, I think relatively safe assumptions can be made about some of the major contributors to homelessness. Researchers are generally careful about using the term causation in fact, there are long-standing tensions among academic disciplines as to what methodological approaches are required to establish it. Statisticians, for example, generally believe that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are needed to establish causation; but as David Freedman has argued, RCTs are often impractical or unethical (Freedman, 1999, p. 255). Rather, careful researchers are more likely to say things like these factors have likely contributed to this effect,” or “I think it’s likely that this effect caused this to happen And with that in mind, I’d like to suggest that there are probably three major factors that have contributed to homelessness in Canada: 1) macroeconomic factors (especially unemployment); 2) changes to our social welfare system (including a decrease in the availability of government-subsidized housing); and 3) the design and administration of policies whose specific intent is to respond directly to homelessness (often referred to as ‘systems responses’ to homelessness).

3. Homelessness has profound ramifications on the lives of children. As I wrote in 2012: Two studies have been done in Toronto looking at the role of housing with respect to children in care. Results of both studies indicate that the state of the family housing was a factor in one in five cases in which a child was temporarily admitted into care. Results from the Toronto research also indicate that, in one in 10 cases, housing status delayed the return home of a child from care (Falvo, 2012, p. 14). Other research estimates that, on an annual basis in Toronto alone, approximately 300 babies are born to mothers who are homeless. (Of course, homelessness can have profound ramifications on the lives of adults as well. For more on this, see this 2007 study.)

4. The role of Canada’s federal government in funding both housing for low-income persons and programming for homeless persons has varied considerably over time. Provinces and territories spend much more of their own money on housing for low-income persons when the federal government leads. Thus, a considerable amount of subsidized housing for low-income Canadians was built from the mid-1960s through to the early 1990s. Since the early 1990s, comparatively little subsidized housing has been built for low-income persons in Canada. I should also note that the annual, inflation-adjusted value of federal funding for homelessness today is worth just 35% of what it was worth in 1999.

5. Not every province/territory responds to homelessness in the same way. While much mores subsidized housing for low-income persons gets built when the federal government leads, provinces and territories don’t always respond to federal funding initiatives in the same way. For example, between 2002 and 2013, three times as many subsidized housing units were built in Alberta (on a per capita basis) than in Ontario. I would argue that a driving force behind this differential stems from Alberta’s strong economic performance during this same period relative to that of Ontario’s.

6. Though a careful researcher will be cautious in discussing what causes homelessness, I think we know a lot about what solves it. In many cases, a person who stays in an emergency shelter will exit homelessness without substantial public resources. In some cases, they might find housing on their own; in other cases, family and friends may provide them with short term assistance e.g. some financial support, a couch to sleep on, etc. (To learn more about lengths of stay in homeless shelters in a sample of Canadian cities, see this 2013 study.) Researchers and advocates for the homeless generally don’t view such short-term stays as a major public policy challenge the bigger challenge is in the case of persons who stay in emergency shelters (and outside) for longer periods of time. Even here though, I would argue that it’s hardly a mystery as to what constitutes an effective policy response.

Indeed, as early as the mid-1980s, small non-profit organizations in Ontario (and possibly in other provinces as well) found success in building subsidized housing for persons who had experienced long-term homelessness they did so by providing professional staff support to help such tenants live independently in those units. This was (and still is) known as supportive housing. The emergence of supportive housing in Ontario happened in large part due to strong advocacy by community-based groups. This included: the Singles Displaced Persons Project; the consumer/survivor movement; the slogan homes not hostels the founding of Houselink Community Homes; and the founding of Homes First Society. Conditions of eligibility for such housing varied from one provider to the next. In many cases, the tenant did not have to prove housing readiness before being offered a unit. In fact, Homes First Society got its name because its founders believed that its tenants needed homes first before addressing other challenges (i.e. mental health, substance use, employment, etc.).

Today, researchers, practitioners and advocates refer to this approach ashousing first. And very recently, a successful RCT of housing first was conducted in five Canadian cities; I’ve previously written about that study here.

7. There are several ways of making housing available to low-income households; all of them involve the private sector to varying degrees. Sometimes when government subsidizes housing for low-income persons, it provides money to a non-profit entity that develops, owns and operates the units. Other times, government provides a subsidy to landlords (either for-profit or non-profit); in exchange for the subsidy, the landlord agree to rent units at a reduced rate for a specified period of time (e.g. in some cases, for 10 years). And other times, government provides money (often known as a housing allowance) to low-income tenants who then rent a unit from a for-profit landlord. Of the three possible approaches, I personally have a preference for the option where a non-profit entity develops, owns and operates the units (and I have previously written about this here). Having said that, I think there’s a place for all three approaches, depending on local context.

8. Some jurisdictions have used sophisticated information management systems as part of their efforts to respond to homelessness. Many organizations serving homeless persons in Calgary enter client information into a database called the Homelessness Management Information System, a system that is also used in many American cities. Client-level information (such as age, health status, employment status and housing status) is entered into the database when an initial intake is done. While the client is receiving services, updated information is entered again; in the case of some programs, follow-up assessments are done every three months. In the case of some program types, there are both exit and post-exit follow-up assessments completed. All information-gathering is subject to provincial privacy legislation. There are many uses for the data once it’s gathered. For example, some organizations use the data to provide case management services to clients. Also, funders are able to assess each organization’s performance against benchmarks (i.e. percentage of clients who receive housing after a specific period of time).

9. When it comes to both preventing and responding to homelessness, the capacity of government to generate revenue matters a great deal.Governments typically use revenue generated from taxation to finance both subsidized housing and other important social programs. When tax revenue decreases, many governments have less ability to spend on such programs. Since the mid-1990s, tax revenue in Canada (measured as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product) has decreased substantially. If this trend doesn’t reverse itself soon, it will be very challenging for many governments (especially provincial, territorial and municipal governments) to invest in important social programs. There is currently a move afoot by some Canadians to increase taxes; it is led by Alex Himelfarb, former Clerk of the Privy Council. Alex and his son Jordan recently co-edited a book that calls for the need for higher taxation in Canada. (Note: according to some schools of thought, it isn’t necessary for a sovereign government with its own currency to tax more in order to finance more social spending. While keeping in mind that such an approach would be most relevant to Canada’s federal government and much less relevant to provincial, territorial and municipal governments readers can read more about one such school of thought here.)

10. Over the course of the next decade, Canada will likely see substantial increases in homelessness among both seniors and Indigenous peoples (First Nation, Metis and Inuit). Seniors and Indigenous peoples are growing as a percentage of Canada’s total population. Further, the percentage of seniors living below Statistics Canada’s Low-Income Measure has grown substantially since the mid-1990s. I think all of this makes it likely that both of these groups will begin to grow as a percentage of Canada’s homeless populations.

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The following individuals were very helpful in helping me prepare the present blog post: Maroine Bendaoud, Lisa Burke, George Fallis, Greg Suttor, Francesco Falvo, Louise Gallagher, Ali Jadidzadeh, Lisa Ker, Jennifer Legate, Kevin McNichol, Richard Shillington, Blake Thomas and Mike Veall. Any errors are mine.

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