My review of Robert Clark’s book on Canada’s prisons

My review of Robert Clark’s book on Canada’s prisons

My review of Robert Clark’s book on Canada’s prisons

Clark, R. (2017). Down inside: Thirty years in Canada’s prison service. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane.

Robert Clark has written a very good book about his 30 years working in Canada’s prison system. Mr. Clark worked from 1980 until 2009 in seven different federal prisons, all located in Ontario. The book, a compilation of personal accounts based on the author’s various assignments, appears both balanced and concise (though it only discusses male prisoners and federal institutions).

Since prisons can be a pipeline into homelessness, I’ve reviewed the book with great interest.

Here are 10 things to know:

 

  1. Many of Canada’s prisoners are victims of child abuse. According to the author: “Most of the prisoner files I read contained histories of physical, emotional, and, often, childhood sexual abuse” (p. 16).This often led to child welfare interventions and then incarceration in youth facilities.
  1. Nearly 40% of federal prisoners have serious mental health challenges, and this is exacerbated by solitary confinement (formally known as administrative segregation).[1] Prisoners in solitary often have no idea when their time in there will end. Solitary can be very detrimental to a prisoner’s already-fragile mental health and can cause them to be suicidal. The 1996 Arbour Commission of Inquiry examined the impact of solitary confinement in detail.
  1. Many of Canada’s prison staff do outstanding work. For example, the author felt he had “hit the jackpot” when he arrived at Pittsburgh Institution (p. 216). On a personal note, I was touched to see the author single out my late uncle John Van Luven as being part of a group of four parole officers there who were “knowledgeable, professional, and self-motivated” (p. 216). 
  1. Many of Canada’s prison staff do not do outstanding work. According to the author, “too few prison employees care about the prisoners under their care, other than to make sure they are alive and behaving. Any interest in a prisoner’s well-being and their chances for becoming a law-abiding citizen is almost non-existent” (p. 16). One of the author’s colleagues used to say: “I just treat them all like they’re doing a hundred years for rape” (p. 124)! 
  1. Solidarity among staff can be excessive. Most prison staff are extremely reluctant to snitch on their colleagues—and this reluctance is known as the blue wall. Some such solidarity is very pronounced among staff in the face of management, and some staff maintain such solidarity even after they become managers. This is almost identical to the understanding that prisoners have among one another, whereby being labelled a ‘rat’ or a ‘snitch’ can come with severe consequences.
  1. Not every Canadian prison is the same. The book has considerable praise for the Regional Reception Centre at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec. It notes, “while newcomer prisoners in Ontario languished under twenty-three-hour lockup, each new prisoner in Quebec was put through a series of academic and vocational aptitude tests that assisted staff at the next institution in guiding the prisoner’s time and energy” (p. 117). 
  1. Sometimes a specific prison can develop a bad culture. According to the book, this occurred at the now-decommissioned Kingston Penitentiary, where staff stopped enforcing many rules. When the book’s author started working there in 1997, he noticed that prison cells contained items they weren’t supposed to—in one case, a 25-metre extension cord—and that staff had simply stopped caring. (In this particular case, the author attributes much of the bad culture to a management decision to have uniformed staff work consecutive 16-hour shifts.) 
  1. Corruption at Kingston Penitentiary was eventually exposed through an RCMP investigation known as Operation Correct Zero. As a result of the investigation, five guards were terminated for various criminal offences, including drug dealing. In addition, three other guards committed suicide during the course of the investigation.
  1. I wish the book had dealt more with harm reduction in Canada’s prisons. Harm reduction focuses on reducing harm caused by drug use without requiring total abstinence. For example, it can include the distribution of condoms and unused syringes. There is an important body of evidence supporting the view that harm reduction approaches reduce the risk of transmission of blood-borne diseases and prevent overdoses. It is further estimated that HIV rates in Canada’s federal prisons are 10 times higher than in the general population, and Hepatitis C 30 times higher.
  1. I wish the book had included more of an intersectional analysis. I found that the book contained insufficient attention to the unique situations—and overrepresentation—of racialized persons (including First Nations, Inuit and Métis people) in Canada’s prisons. I also think the book could have further explored the unique experiences facing trans persons in prisons.[2]

    In Sum.
    If you’re interested in learning more about conditions inside Canada’s prisons, I strongly suggest you read this book. For people interested in the role played by corrections in leading people into homelessness, the book will be especially worthwhile. I also suggest you listen to this 28-minute podcast, where the author is interviewed by the CBC’s Michael Enright.

 

I wish to thank the following individuals for assistance with this review: Robert Clark, JT Falvo, Susan Falvo, Craig Jones, Amber Kellen, Katrina Milaney, Amanda Moss, Angela Regnier, Jonathan Robart, Vincent St-Martin, and three anonymous sources. Any errors are mine.

[1] Such statistics can be found in the annual reports of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, available here.

[2] A primer on intersectional analysis can be found here.

Ten things to know about poverty measurement in Canada

Ten things to know about poverty measurement in Canada

Ten things to know about poverty measurement in Canada

On October 29, I gave a guest presentation to Professor Filipe Duarte’s master’s seminar class at the University of Windsor. The topic of my presentation was poverty measurement in Canada.

Here are 10 things to know.

  1. Use of the Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) would suggest that poverty in Canada has decreased dramatically since the mid-1990s. LICO focuses on the amount of money spent by a family on ‘necessities’ (i.e., housing, food and clothing) as determined by a group of federal public servants. If a family is spending a substantially higher percentage of their income on such necessities—e.g., 20 percentage points higher than the average Canadian family—then the family in question falls below the LICO. The LICO was supposed to be recalculated on a regular basis to reflect changes in spending patterns, but that hasn’t happened since 1992 and is one likely reason for the reduction in poverty shown by this measure (having said that, the LICO has been adjusted each year for inflation). Today, very few experts take the LICO seriously.
  2. Use of the Low Income Measure (LIM) would suggest that poverty in Canada has seen mild fluctuations since the mid-1990s. LIM’s focus is on the family’s income, not on what they spend. A family whose income is below 50% of the national median income (adjusted for family size) is said to be poor according to this measure. LIM, in effect, measures income inequality among the bottom half of income earners. The LIM is useful for international comparisons (though it is far from perfect in that regard, as it looks only at income, not the availability of social programs). 
  3. Use of the Market Basket Measure (MBM) suggests that Canada has seen a major decrease in poverty over the past decade. With the MBM, public officials figure out the cost of a basket of goods and services they feel is sufficient for a standard of living “between the poles of subsistence and social inclusion.” Calculations are then made about how much such a basket costs (the cost of this basket has been estimated for 50 regions across Canada). The content of this basket is periodically adjusted, the last time being in 2011, and its value gets adjusted each year for inflation. If you’re poor according to the MBM, it’s because experts believe you could not afford that basket of goods in your community.

    Visual courtesy of Kevin Milligan.

  4. One of the LICO’s shortcomings is that it doesn’t do a good job of accounting for regional variations in the cost of living across Canada. The LICO (as mentioned above) also hasn’t been adjusted since 1992, meaning that it doesn’t currently account for how much things cost today or what people spend money on today (as Andrew Jackson notes, it doesn’t include the cost of Internet). Finally, LICO doesn’t easily allow for international comparisons. 
  5. One of the LIM’s shortcomings is that it can suggest that recessions are good for poverty reduction. As Alain Noël notes, the LIM is “sensitive to changes in the median income, which sometimes produces counterintuitive results. In a recession, for example, when the median income is flat, the poverty rate may seem to be decreasing while unemployment and economic hardship are increasing.” What’s more, the fact that LIM is based on national median income—as opposed to the median income for the province or territory in question—seems arbitrary to many. Indeed, Professor Noël further notes that “real median incomes vary considerably from one province to another.”
  6. Of the three major indicators, my own preference is the LIM. First, it avoids the inherent challenge of deciding what constitutes an appropriate a basket of goods and services in a country of 37 million people, spanning 10 million km2 and six time zones. Second, I think relativity is what’s really important here—if median income across Canada is increasing, then so too should everyone’s (and vice versa). Third, the LIM lends itself well to international comparisons. I’d like to see it calculated based on national median income for international comparisons, and also based on median income for the economic region in question, in order to provide a more meaningful number.
  7. The debate within Canada has largely ignored the need for indicators of assets. This point has been made by David Rothwell and Jennifer Robson, who note that income and assets are not always correlated. For example, a low-wage worker might have an income that brings them above the LIM, but they may also have $75,000 in student loans and credit card debt. Conversely, a senior could be relying exclusively on Old Age Security as a source of income while also owning a $2 million home outright. (Monitoring asset poverty might put pressure on provincial and territorial officials to stop discouraging asset accumulation among social assistance recipients.)
  8. It’s also important to directly measure material deprivation. For example, core housing need measures the affordability, suitability and adequacy of a person’s housing. Likewise, food insecurity measurement directly assesses the inadequacy or insecurity in access to food due to financial challenges. It’s also important to assess who has access to high-quality childcare and prescription medication. (For a critical analysis of the need to directly measure material deprivation, see this 2017 conference paper.)
  9. In August 2018, Canada’s federal government announced its formal adoption of the MBM as its official poverty measure. Its poverty reduction strategy also unveiled a dashboard of poverty-related indicators. This seems very much in line with a position taken by Peter Hicks in a recent blog post, in which he calls for “an evolving ‘dashboard’ of carefully selected indicators would be more useful than a single measure.” The new federal strategy will use the MBM to monitor progress—importantly, it will not use the MBM to determine program eligibility.
  10. Seniors make for an interesting case study here. According to the LIM, a great many seniors in Canada currently experience poverty. But according to the MBM, very few seniors in Canada currently experience poverty. As Andrew Jackson pointed out last year: “There is a huge difference between the LIM and MBM poverty rates for seniors (14.3% vs 5.1% in 2015.)” And this raises an important question: if Canada’s official poverty measure suggests there’s very little seniors’ poverty, to what extent will Canada’s federal government prioritize assistance for seniors?

In sum. The Trudeau government deserves praise for unveiling a dashboard of poverty indicators that will hopefully receive close attention from federal officials in partnership with provincial, territorial and municipal officials, as well as researchers and advocates. Having said that, Ron Kneebone reminds me that the MBM has yet to be formally adopted by provincial or territorial governments. There is also reason to be very concerned about what initiatives may or not be in store for seniors, given that the MBM suggests they currently experience very little poverty.

 

I wish to thank the following individuals for assistance with this blog post: Miles Corak, Filipe Duarte and his students, Susan Falvo, Reuben Ford, Rob Gillezeau, Seth Klein, Ron Kneebone, Andrew Jackson, Marc Lee, David Macdonald, Michael Mendelson, Allan Moscovitch, Geranda Notten, Charles Plante, Saul Schwartz, Richard Shillington, Vincent St-Martin, John Stapleton, Ricardo Tranjan, and Mike Veall. Any errors are mine.

My review of Eric Weissman’s book on intentional homeless communities

My review of Eric Weissman’s book on intentional homeless communities

My review of Eric Weissman’s book on intentional homeless communities

BOOK REVIEW

Weissman, E. (2017). Tranquility on the razor’s edge: Changing narratives of inevitability. Oakville, ON: Rock’s Mills Press.

 

Eric Weissman is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John. But he was once homeless, and has since written a very good book about intentional communities in Canada and the United States. This book is based on Eric’s PhD thesis, which in 2014 won a major national award.

Here are 10 things to know: 

  1. This book focuses on intentional homeless communities (IHC) in Canada and the United States. Intentional communities in general are communities built around specific goals. But in the case of this book, I mean small communities of housing sometimes made from discarded, donated and recycled material, and sometimes purpose-built, to address homelessness. IHCs have relatively sophisticated governance structures and are typically located on land owned by non-profits, churches or municipal government. The book argues that such communities are on the rise and that they constitute both official and unofficial responses to homelessness depending on which examples we look at. There are dozens of such communities in the United States. According to the book’s author, Homes for Heroes (Calgary) and Steve Cardiff Tiny House Community (Whitehorse) are Canadian examples of IHCs.
  2. Intentional communities are not the same thing as tent cities or tiny home communities. IHCs are legal in several American cities, where some receive government funding (though most such funding comes from non-profits and private donors). Sometimes referred to as ‘villages,’ they often have their own websites and wi-fi networks. Some have formal triage systems for determining new admissions. Many hold elections and have formal governance arrangements. Some pay liability insurance, some are legally incorporated, and some are inspected regularly by municipal officials. Tent cities, by contrast, are usually temporary, largely-unorganized and rarely sanctioned by cities. Conventional tiny-home communities reflect current tastes for micro-housing and may not be organized around any social cause in particular.
  3. The book demonstrates that who makes day-to-day housing-related decisions for marginalized persons matters. In other words, the book argues that simply having affordable housing in place with social work support (i.e., supportive housing) doesn’t cut it if we truly want to empower tenants. Rather, democratic engagement with tenants is also important. (I think Canadian housing researchers and advocates had a greater appreciation of this concept in the 1970s than they do today. For more on important innovations in the 1970s, check out Greg Suttor’s recent book on the history of social housing in Canada.)
  4. One of the book’s many strengths is that it makes readers think unconventionally about affordable housing. I came away from reading this book realizing that my own views on the topic are somewhat narrow. Until reading the book, I had not really given intentional communities much thought as a serious approach to addressing homelessness.
  5. The book embraces a research approach called ethnography. Very common in anthropology, this approach involves writing about something as you live it. Eric wrote this book based on his participation and residence in a few key intentional communities. He filmed and interviewed hundreds of residents and typed up his notes on site. Not only did he earn ‘street cred,’ he also applied it directly to his research.
  6. One of the book’s messages is that researchers may try to appear neutral, but we all have biases.[1] I can relate to this message, having personally worked 10 years as a front-line community worker with persons experiencing homelessness. Personal take-ways of mine from that work include the following propositions: don’t make it difficult for a person to seek emergency shelter; persons experiencing homelessness thrive when given the chance to engage in paid work; and persons experiencing homelessness almost always agree to live in affordable housing when it’s offered to them in an appropriate manner.
  7. The author’s own biases emerged from his own life experience with trauma, illicit drug use and homelessness. He discusses this brilliantly and powerfully in chapter three, which is arguably the best-written book chapter I’ve ever read. That chapter helped me understand both youth homelessness and illicit drug use.
  8. This would be a good book for students to read in a graduate university seminar on research methods. And chapter two itself would be a great stand-alone reading to assign to graduate students in such a seminar. However, in order to properly understand much of the book’s language, concepts and arguments, a reader would likely need to have at least one university degree in the social sciences (I personally think the book puts too much emphasis on what social theorists have said over the years).
  9. The book could have done a better job of articulating the drawbacks of intentional communities. To be fair, the author does acknowledge that the drawbacks of intentional communities can include: “drug problems, faction-led power struggles and a failure to provide adequate transitional experiences for people wishing to reclaim their role in society” (p. 300). But on the whole, the book contains very little discussion about: some of these communities lacking running water, heating and cooking facilities; how prone some of their residents are to property theft; and the extent to which such communities are vulnerable to being targeted by law enforcement officials.
  10. The book misses an important opportunity to discuss the practical ways government and the non-profit sector can support intentional communities. I was left wondering what kind of funding could be directed at such communities, and what specific services should be supported. Also, the book suggests that supporting intentional communities can be much cheaper than supporting more conventional forms of affordable housing, but no breakdown is provided as to how much it would cost to assist them.

In sum: This book, which took a lot of courage to write, doesn’t shy away from discussing the awkward. And many advocates of the tiny-house movement may find this book to be inspirational. The book also reminds me of advice I once got from a supervisor at Toronto’s Homes First Society: “When housing’s being developed for marginalized populations, people with homes shouldn’t try to tell people without homes what their housing ought to look like.” 

Eric Weissman patiently answered all of my questions via email as I prepared this review. I also wish to thank Adam Melnyk, Bernie Pauly, Marion Steele and Vincent St-Martin for their assistance.

[1] In the social sciences, positivists tend to view themselves as neutral observers, merely trying to find evidence. By contrast, interpretivists tend to openly acknowledge and embrace their biases (see this short article for more on this distinction).

 

 

Ten things to know about affordable housing in Alberta

Ten things to know about affordable housing in Alberta

Ten things to know about affordable housing in Alberta

People without affordable housing suffer from poor health outcomes, have difficulty finding and sustaining employment and are at greater risk of having their children removed by child welfare authorities.

Here are 10 things to know about affordable housing in Alberta specifically:

  1. The NDP government of Rachel Notley undertook important initiatives pertaining to affordable housing. In its 2016 budget, the Notley government announced the near doubling of provincial spending on housing. This represented a total of $892 million in new funding, spanning a five-year period.
  2. According to the most recent Census, 11.4% of Alberta households experience core housing need, representing more than 164,000 households. In order to assess housing need for Canadians, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation uses a measure called core housing need. A household is said to be in core housing need if, out of financial necessity, they either pay more than 30% of their gross household income on housing, live in housing requiring major repairs, or live in housing with insufficient bedrooms for the household size in question (as determined by the National Occupancy Standards).
  3. Seniors living alone in Alberta face particularly high rates of core housing need. Nearly 34% of senior (65+) females living alone in Alberta were in core housing need in 2011, while the figure for senior (65+) males living alone was just under 26%. 
  4. Female lone-parent households in Alberta also face a particularly high rate of core housing need. More than 27% of these households were in core housing need in 2011. However, that figure likely dropped after the NDP government of Rachel Notley introduced the Alberta Child Benefit, a major feature of the 2016 Alberta budget.
  5. Members of Alberta First Nations also experience very high rates of core housing need. In fact, the rate of core housing need for Status Indians is nearly 25%—more than double the rate for non-Indigenous households in the province. And get this: these core need figures do not account for households living on reserve (if they did, that figure would be much greater). I should also note that more than 25% of  persons experiencing absolute homelessness in Alberta identify as being Indigenous, even though Indigenous peoples make up just 7% of Alberta’s total population.
  6. Housing typically constitutes a larger share of spending for low-income households (compared with middle- and higher-income households). And as the figure below illustrates, that phenomenon got measurably worse for low-income households in Alberta between 2010 and 2016.

    Source. Kneebone, R., & Wilkins, M. G. (2018). Social Policy Trends: Paying for the Essentials: Shelter, Food and Energy Consumption by Household Income Quintile for 2010 and 2016. The School of Public Policy Publications, 11. Retrieved from Policy School’s website: https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Social-Trends-Engel-Curves-July-2018.pdf

  7. On a per capita basis, Alberta has far fewer subsidized housing units than the rest of Canada. According to the most recent Census, subsidized housing represents just 2.9% of Alberta’s housing units; for Canada as a whole, the figure is 4.2%.
  8. Some Alberta cities have much more low-cost rental housing (per capita) than others. The visual below shows the range of private market rents paid on one- and two-bedroom apartments across Alberta’s seven major cities. The light-coloured bars show the range of rents paid on the second quintile (i.e., the second-poorest quintile) of private market rents. The next darkest bar shows the range of rents paid on the third quintile (i.e., the middle quintile) of rents, while the darkest bars define the range of rents paid on the fourth quintile of rents. Among the seven major cities, Medicine Hat appears to have the most low-cost rental housing units (per capita), and Calgary the fewest.

    Notes. Monthly rent quintiles by city in 2017. Data provided to Ron Kneebone (University of Calgary) by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The range of rents paid on the first and fifth quintiles are not reported due to confidentiality reasons.

  9. Going forward, the impact of the federal government’s National Housing Strategy will be modest. Recent analysis by Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) projects future federal housing spending to actually decrease over the next decade (relative to Gross Domestic Product). The same analysis projects that total spending on Indigenous housing by Canada’s federal government will be “substantially lower” going forward. (For a general overview of the National Housing Strategy, see this analysis.)
  10. There are considerable cost savings to be realized when investing in affordable housing, especially when the tenants have serious mental health challenges. Subsidized housing for vulnerable subpopulations (including persons with mental health challenges) that is accompanied by professional staff support is referred to as supportive housing. Recent analysis in Calgary estimates considerable cost savings in the health and justice sectors attributable to formerly-homeless persons receiving supportive housing.

In Sum. For a more comprehensive look at affordable housing in Alberta, see this year’s Alberta Alternative Budget (AAB). Full disclosure: I was primary author of the chapter on affordable housing and homelessness.

I wish to thank the following individuals for invaluable assistance with the housing chapter of this year’s AAB: Meaghan Bell, John Kmech, Claire Noble, Chidom Otogwu, Steve Pomeroy, Ron Kneebone, Vincent St. Martin, John Veenstra and one anonymous reviewer. Any errors are mine.

Homelessness, harm reduction and Housing First

Homelessness, harm reduction and Housing First

Homelessness, harm reduction and Housing First

I was recently invited to give a presentation at a two-day event discussing the overdose crisis and First Nations, with a focus on southern Alberta. My presentation (slide deck available here) focused on homelessness, substance use, harm reduction and Housing First.

With this in mind, here are 10 things to know:

  1. Indigenous peoples are overrepresented among persons experiencing absolute homelessness in Alberta. According to results of the last province-wide Point-in-Time homelessness count, Indigenous peoples represent 7% of Alberta’s total population, but 26% of persons experiencing absolute homelessness in the province’s seven largest cities. A similar phenomenon exists right across Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
  2. To truly understand homelessness among Indigenous peoples, it is important to understand flow between communities. Most Indigenous peoples experiencing absolute homelessness in Alberta’s major cities report not being from the community in question. In Calgary, for example, just 11% of Indigenous peoples experiencing absolute homelessness report always having lived in Calgary.
  3. A major study is about to explore factors behind the flow of First Nations people between southern Alberta communities. Specifically, it will look at those who end up experiencing absolute homelessness in Calgary. Its research team consists of Jodi Bruhn, Gabrielle Linsdstrom, Allan Moscovitch and Steve Pomeroy. More information on this project can be found in last fall’s Request for Proposals. The research is being funded by the Calgary Homeless Foundation.
  4. Traumatic events are an important factor leading a homeless person to use drugs. A 2015 Winnipeg study asked what factors made a homeless person more likely to be a person who uses drugs (PWUD). Traumatic events, especially residential school history, were found to be one of the most important factors. Other factors identified in the study as leading a person to use drugs included mental and physical health problems (i.e., people self-medicate). What’s more, a recent First Nations Health Authority report from British Columbia identifies factors that lead to substance use. They include: racism; intergenerational trauma (e.g., residential schools); and limited access to mental health and addiction treatment (which is often reported by members of First Nations).
  5. Homeless shelters do not and cannot adequately respond to the overdose crisis. A 2014 study looked at the use of homeless shelters in Atlantic Canada (it looked at all four Atlantic provinces). It found that shelters focus on providing shelter and do not have a strong mandate to fully support PWUDs. A 2018 report went further, identifying the following barriers in some homeless shelters in Canada: clients having to ask staff to access harm reduction supplies (to be discussed below); shelters refusing services to people under the influence; and rigid entry process (e.g., extensive paperwork, the need for multiple pieces of documentation).
  6. It is very challenging for staff in homeless shelters to properly engage with people who use drugs, largely because on-site use of illicit substances is prohibited. To put it bluntly, staff give out supplies but forbid the on-site use of drugs. Shelter washrooms can therefore become “de facto unsupervised consumption sites” (p. 87).
  7. Harm reduction focuses on reducing harm caused by drug use without requiring total abstinence. Harm reduction approaches include the distribution of condoms, clean syringes and safe inhalation kits. There is solid evidence supporting the view that harm reduction approaches: reduce risk-taking behaviour; reduce the risk of transmission of blood-borne diseases; prevent overdoses; reduce crime; and increase contact with other supports (including healthcare supports).
  8. Supervised consumption services are one form of harm reduction. According to this report, they “consist of providing a safe, hygienic environment in which people can use drugs with sterile equipment under the supervision of trained staff or volunteers” (p. 2). As of February 2019, 28 supervised consumption services sites were operating under an exemption from Canada’s federal government.
  9. Supervised consumption services have proven to be very effective in southern Alberta. During 2018 alone, Calgary’s supervised consumption site saw nearly 52,000 visits, resulting in more than 700 overdose reversals. Also during 2018 alone, Lethbridge’s site saw nearly 128,000 site visits, resulting in more than 1,300 overdose reversals.
  10. Housing First is an approach whereby people in need of affordable housing receive housing without having to first prove their ‘housing readiness.’ According to this study: “Harm reduction is a key principle of Housing First, where individuals are not required or expected to undergo treatment for substance use or to abstain in order to access and keep permanent housing” (p. 1). However, Housing First does not mean housing only. That is, other social supports—including drug and alcohol treatment, which may lead to reduced substance use—are crucial to the success of Housing First.

In Sum. To understand high rates of homelessness and substance use among Indigenous peoples, it is important to consider the roles played by trauma and racism. It is also important to understand flow between communities, as well as the inadequacies of homeless shelters. Harm reduction and Housing First remain important policy responses to the overdose crisis.

 

I wish to thank the following individuals for invaluable assistance with this blog post: Lorraine Barnaby, Shannon Beavis, Jodi Bruhn, Julia Christensen, Arlene Haché, Leslie Hill, Diana Krecsy, Bren Little Light, Katelyn Lucas, Adam Melnyk, Susan McGee, Katrina Milaney, Gautam Mukherjee, Bernie Pauly, Steven Richardson, Chris Sarin, Quentin Sinclair, Lorie Steer, Vincent St-Martin and Alina Turner. Any errors are mine.

Saskatchewan budget misses opportunity on rental housing assistance

Saskatchewan budget misses opportunity on rental housing assistance

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.