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Special housing eyed where chronically homeless can get the help they need
Desperately looking for a way to deal with downtown Victoria’s growing numbers of homeless – about 1,200 people at last count – the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce thinks it’s found a way to get at least 200 chronically homeless off the street.
But it’s not a made-in-Canada solution.
The answer is adopting a Canadian version of the American Interagency Council of Homelessness strategy that’s decreased the number of homeless on the streets of participating cities by up to 70 per cent, said Bruce Carter, chamber chief executive officer.
Adopting a similar 10-year strategy here would get chronically homeless – people with disabilities, mental illness and addictions problems – into special housing where they can get the support services they need.
Just back from the Canadian Chamber’s policy debates in Ontario, Carter said he thinks he’s sold the 170,000-member Canadian Chamber of Commerce that it’s a homeless answer worth considering.
With an estimated 20,000 homeless across Canada living in downtown alleys and in front of businesses, he said there’s no denying “homelessness has become a huge problem for our businesses across the country.”
But there’s no national homeless policy in this country, said Carter, estimating it would cost about $500 million per year to implement an ICH-type strategy in this country.
Using Portland, Ore., as an example of how a city can reduce chronic homeless numbers by 60 per cent within the third year of its ICH plan, Carter said Portland found each person off the street saves the city $16,000 in reduced social costs.
The cost saving would be similar if Victoria copied Portland’s example – a $3.2 million saving per year if just 200 chronic homeless were removed from downtown Victoria streets, he said.
A Capital Regional District report in 2001 found providing services and shelter for a homeless person costs $40,000 annually, whereas the cost to house that person is $28,000.
Carter said the Victoria chamber convinced its national body that the business community should be taking a stronger advocacy role on the issue.
“Our lower levels of government continue to struggle with limited funding to deal with the problem, and in the meantime, the doorsteps of business are becoming the homes for an increasing number of people in need,” he said.
“It is unacceptable to continue the status quo approach because it’s getting us nowhere.”
He said the Victoria chamber argued that federal funding should be increased and allocated to a “housing first” strategy as currently practiced in the United States.
“Our current method of shuffling people around various shelters and levels of housing, with interspersed health and social services is extremely expensive, and as we have seen, not very effective,” said Carter.
“Other countries have adopted a more performance-based and results-oriented approach and are seeing remarkable decreases in the numbers of individuals suffering on the streets, he said, adding that Canada needs to re-evaluate its approach, and move towards a program design with proven results.
Portland’s made a great start on its 10-year plan to end homelessness, Carter said.
Audit figures released last month show Portland has actually put more chronically homeless people into houses than originally projected.
But how the city will fare in the plan’s final seven-plus years is less clear, the audit said, and city officials must set more solid goals if it hopes to sustain progress – including defining what it means to “end homelessness.”
“It’s very positive so far. They’ve set specific goals and met them,” said Drummond Kahn, the city’s director of audit services said in a recent report.
“As we get further along, it’s going to get more challenging” because the city’s goals are cloudier and because, after first helping those more amenable to housing, the remaining homeless population may be harder to serve.
In 2004, that group comprised about one-tenth of Portland’s homeless population but used about half the roughly $30 million spent on services for the homeless by trying to get chronically homeless people directly into “permanent supportive housing,” where people can live and get support services, instead of moving people through a series of shelters to permanent homes.
The audit helps prove the thesis that it’s better to put homeless people directly into permanent housing than temporary shelters, Commissioner Erik Sten, who oversees the Bureau of Housing and Community Development, said in the same report.
By Rudy HaugenederBook Guest Homeless Ontario Ontario
