By Kiegan Irish
Published in September 2020
The housing market is in crisis. As many as 6000 people will be evicted from their living spaces over the coming weeks as the Landlord and Tenant Board in Ontario processes the eviction applications that have built up over the course of the Covid-19 lockdown. The government lifted the moratorium on evictions as of the end of July. Those numbers will be much higher if we consider everyone who will be evicted across the country after being unable to pay rent through the Covid-19 pandemic and the attending job losses and economic downturn.
Many in our community and at the Working Centre experience homelessness and we can testify to the great toll that lack of basic security and stability can take on a person’s health. It is profoundly disturbing that in the midst of this pandemic our society would be so willing to expose people to homelessness through the violence of eviction. It is no exaggeration to say that this will lead to the deaths of vulnerable people.
This latest round of evictions in the midst of the pandemic is symptomatic of the larger housing market which is itself the sickness. While the Ontario Human Rights Commission recognizes housing as a right for all, the way we manage housing demonstrates that we do not honour this right. The housing market has created conditions where it is nearly impossible to afford a place to live while working full time on minimum wage—and it is much more difficult for those who cannot participate in this kind of waged work. An OW cheque is significantly less than the cost of a bachelor apartment, unless an individual has friends or family supporting them therefore, they have no chance of renting. These conditions result in increasing homelessness and exposure of the most vulnerable people in our society to violence and death.
Government deregulation has opened up housing to financial markets and speculation. Land speculation and investment has become increasingly profitable; at the same time as thousands of luxury housing units sit empty, more and more people are forced into homelessness or precarious and dangerous rental housing. The City of Kitchener has recognized housing as an area of great need and their report acknowledges that there is a shortfall of about 14 450 units of affordable housing. Working Centre’s experience in temporary shelter last winter saw up to 260 different people sleeping on the floors of St. Mary’s church and an old Tim Horton’s as they had no other options. Rent seeking and profiting from one of the basic needs of survival is a direct cause of the dislocation which characterizes housing insecurity in Kitchener, in Ontario, and beyond.
The solution lies in the decommodification of housing and organizing housing as a resource for the common good of everyone—as it says in our human rights code, it is the right of every person to have a place to live. Another approach is to consider housing as part of an equitable healthcare system. Equitable access to health care means that the same services are available to everyone within a given territory regardless of their social position. However—as one of our outreach workers puts it—you have to be alive to receive healthcare. A safe dwelling place is at the foundation of all other health concerns.
The Working Centre continues to provide supported housing units focused on helping people move from homelessness to a stable, safe environment. Increasingly, we are working to place housing within the wider supports of the Working Centre and the Inner City Alliance: flexible and responsive initiatives that focus on food security, harm reduction and safe use, access to healthcare and healthcare professionals, and specialized outreach supports. Along with emerging shelter initiatives, this is a direct response to the local crisis in housing.
We will readily admit that it can be incredibly difficult to house people who have been street involved over many years and who experience complex and compounding challenges like addiction and mental health issues. At the same time, we can attest to the profound – and at times, unlikely – healing journeys many have lived since becoming securely housed. These healing journeys may not have been possible if The Working Centre acted as landlords protecting an investment. Instead, we have committed to leaning-in with our partners to bring healthcare resources, compassion and a trauma-informed lens to our shared work. Apartments can be repaired and rebuilt, not so relationship with and the health of vulnerable people. We are working to leave behind the punitive rental market for the inherently more sustainable community housing model that assumes access to and retention of housing.
But these initiatives are only so large, and they are hard work. There is certainly no infrastructure in place to aid thousands of people now being ejected from their homes. The difficulty of transitioning from homelessness to stable forms of housing is precisely why it is so important to prevent evictions and preempt homelessness through significant efforts at constructing and facilitating affordable housing. Furthermore, we need to work to re-regulate the housing market, put an end to speculation and high-return investment, and drive the cost of housing down. A shift in values needs to happen from a financial perspective which views housing as a source of income and a valuable investment to a perspective which views housing as a basic human need and the beginning of dignity.
