Image by RDNE Stock project via Pexels

In 2021, the Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT) did an astonishing thing. After a protracted renoviction battle over the Toronto neighbourhood’s iconic Mona Lisa building, the KMCLT bought it from the would-be evictors. The rumoured plan to turn it into a cannabis hotel was foiled and the tenants of the 12 residential and five commercial units—including our beloved corner store, barbershop, and hat store—got to stay.

As KMCLT’s co-chair, I helped organize the community around the tenants, and it was satisfying to see the building go into communal hands. For months I’d walk past Kensington Avenue’s vintage shops and fruit stand with a feeling of elation. We bought the building!

KMCLT’s bold move is part of a burgeoning movement of community land trusts (CLTs) across Canada. CLTs are community-led organizations who remove land from the speculative real estate market and keep it affordable forever. They revive the idea of the commons and collective stewardship, and help governments fulfill their responsibility to house their citizens. They’re quickly emerging as one of the only reliable workarounds for people to find affordable housing—and to keep their neighbourhoods alive.

Like most CLT purchases, KMCLT, which is made up of tenants, neighbourhood residents, and other supporters, bought our building with a mix of government funding and a regular mortgage. The mortgage is taken out by the land trust, which uses the rents to pay it off. It’s the government funding that allows us to keep those rents affordable. As we pay off the mortgage, rents can even go down.

Despite attempts at a second acquisition, KMCLT still owns only one building. But the plan is to use equity to purchase other buildings, as fast as we can. The urgency reflects the housing emergency in Canada: for every new unit of affordable housing built, we lose 11. Those lost affordable homes put people on the street.

Still, from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust (DTES CLT), co-led by Indigenous and Japanese Canadian organizations, to Black-led CLTs in Nova Scotia, people are coming together to find solutions to the housing crisis. They are now bolstered by the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, established in 2017. The group has over 40 member CLTs and four staff to support CLT development across Canada. “Urban, suburban, and rural communities reach out to the network regularly for guidance on developing a land trust,” director Nat Pace says.

The first meeting of Canadian CLTs on Canadian soil took place in Montreal in 2018, at a conference organized by the Milton Parc Citizens’ Committee. We toured Milton Parc and heard about the decades-long battle between the community and developers that led to the entire neighbourhood being cooperatively owned under the umbrella of a CLT. The key moment of that conference, however, was when we were challenged by an Indigenous activist to put land back at the core of the movement.

Collective stewardship requires releasing the death-grip private property has on our imaginations. Thinking about land, settlers must necessarily grapple with the fact that it’s stolen. If at that meeting in Montreal we were mainly white settlers talking about CLTs, that is no longer the case. In Northeastern Ontario, the Temiskaming District Community Land Trust is creating an Indigenous women-led CLT to provide Indigenous-designed affordable housing, while in Toronto and B.C., Indigenous land trusts are also taking shape.

The modern CLT movement began with New Communities Inc., an agricultural community formed in Albany, Georgia in 1969 by civil rights activists who believed that secure land tenure was key to Black liberation. Tapping into this idea, African Nova Scotian CLTs, such as Upper Hammonds Plains just outside Halifax and Down the Marsh in Truro, have formed to secure historic land claims. In Vancouver, Hogan’s Alley land trust honours the legacy of Strathcona’s Black community, displaced through racist city planning.

CLTs can encompass so many forms of land use. Cultural land trusts in Toronto and Vancouver have formed to preserve space for artists; The Northern Community Land Trust is creating affordable home ownership in Whitehorse; and, also in Toronto, the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust (PNLT)—the first of the resurgence of CLTs in Canada, having started in 2012—is saving rooming houses from renoviction. PNLT’s first acquisition in 2017 was the Milky Way Garden, which is stewarded by Tibetan refugees.

I’m inspired by the opportunity to rethink not only our relationship to land, but also the extractive capitalism that mines bonds between people. There’s a deep camaraderie between Canadian CLTs, which come out of neighbourhood battles against gentrification, displacement, and erasure of working-class immigrant communities. We learn about community—both its challenges and opportunities—and in turn we create a community for ourselves.

Governments are starting to listen: the recent federal announcement of a $1.5 billion Rental Protection Fund, designed for the acquisition of at-risk residential buildings, is a recognition that we can’t build our way out of the housing crisis, and that non-market housing is essential to keep housing affordable.

It remains to be seen how the Canadian movement will sustain itself over the long term. For now, CLTs offer communities a rare source of optimism in the ever-deepening housing crisis. It’s exciting to be part of it, and to know that anyone who wants to effect change in our relationship to land and community can be part of it, too.

In the summer of 2023, 200 African asylum seekers were left homeless in Toronto. With nowhere to go, they had no choice but to sleep on the streets after escaping poverty, political violence and climate disaster back home.

While municipal, provincial and federal governments twiddled their thumbs, Black and African organizations in the city rallied together to provide shelter, food and assistance to the group of Black migrants. One of the leading organizations behind the effort was the Rwandan Canadian Healing Centre (RCHC), a Toronto-based group that provides support to Rwandans and others facing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by violence and war. Forwarding a mission of hope, the RCHC gathered collaborators and accomplished what the three levels of government could not: they found local shelter spaces for the migrants.

Canada has a 156-year history of welcoming migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Today, the country is more diverse than it has been in over a century. In 2021, according to Statistics Canada, more than 8.3 million people, or 23 percent of the population, were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in the country. This marked the largest proportion since Confederation, beating the previous 1921 record of 22.3 percent and making it the highest number among the G7. People from all over the world have left violent situations to build a new home in the Great White North. This is the story of the Rwandan community as well.

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi is one of the worst atrocities in modern human history. In the span of 100 days of chaos, close to one million Rwandans were slaughtered by their fellow citizens largely due to their ethnicity. Millions of Rwandans, mainly from the Tutsi heritage, fled the landlocked nation to escape the carnage.

By 2016, Toronto was home to over 1,000 Rwandans. Today, most of the city’s Rwandan population is made up of older Rwandans who came as refugees post-genocide, and a younger generation too young to remember the horrors, but who still live with the scars of that time and long for the promise of a prosperous future. Part of that prosperous future means bringing the Rwandan community together to collectively heal from the trauma of war.

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Kizito Musabimana escaped the 1994 Rwandan genocide as a child and came to Canada as an immigrant after spending years in Kenya. When he got to Toronto, he didn’t expect to spend time unhoused, but that’s part of his story. Now, he’s the founder and executive director of the RCHC. Since adopting Canada as his home, Musabimana has been a leader in the city, heralding the effort to find suitable shelter space for the African migrants over the summer. Facing his own history of PTSD, Musabimana knows how powerful community is, and how important physical spaces like homes, community centres, and third spaces are to mental health.

With the help of other East African organizations, the RCHC wants to create a purpose-built neighbourhood for Toronto residents in the Rwandan community and other groups dealing with trauma. The organization is also working with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Canada’s national housing agency, inside their National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs, a project aimed at finding community-driven solutions to the affordable housing crisis. The labs offer local and national organizations funding and expertise to help them solve complex housing problems. One successful project that started within the labs is the Gender Transformative Housing Supporting Women Leaving Violent Relationships: Co-creating Safe-at-Home Hamilton. Another, in association with the Canada Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Research Network (CanFASD) and the Alberta Clinical and Community-Based Evaluation Research Team (ACCERT), aims to create a framework to house youth with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Through the Solutions Lab, the CMHC provides groups like CanFASD or the RCHC with up to $250,000 through a competitive application process to develop a community-centred plan to solve housing issues as they relate to specific populations. “As a newcomer in Canada who has experienced homelessness,” Musabimana says, “I would have greatly benefitted from an affordable housing project like this, which focuses on community and connection that offers resources to navigate a new country.”

Together with the CMHC, the collective of African communities created the African Canadian Affordable Housing Solution/Model. The model is a framework that details all of the important elements necessary for their vision of a purpose-built neighbourhood. To determine what’s needed, Rwandan and East African communities participated in several interviews, surveys, and workshops to flesh out what an urban village should provide. The design of the AfriCanadian model hinges on three interwoven perspectives: intergenerationality, cooperativism and holisticism.

More than most, African families live together in one place. Grandparents, parents and adult children often cohabitate together as a way to keep familial bonds strong. Building housing with room for multiple generations of residents under one roof is a key element of the plan. The model also hopes to set up cooperative networks of self-governance, so community members have direct decision-making power in how their neighbourhood runs. Most importantly, it offers a holistic approach to mental health. With proper access to public space, recreation and onsite counselling, Musabimana wants the project to centre healing. “We want to recreate the support and community of a traditional African village for African Canadians living in Canada who haven’t been able to experience it. To bring a taste of home to the community,” Musabimana said at the onset of the project.

As of November 2023, the group has already created the framework thanks to community engagement. So what’s next? “Once we are able to identify land, then we will have everything we need to begin the development phase,” Musabimana says. But that is not so easy. The path to housing development, and to carving out space in Toronto, is filled with trouble.

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Back home in Rwanda, the government, led by Paul Kagame, has been attempting to restore a country that almost destroyed itself. In 2005, the Rwandan government began creating the legal framework necessary to allow agricultural cooperatives that included housing to flourish within the nation’s market economy. Not only smart economic planning, cooperatives were also meant to build reconciliation among a population scarred by trauma. According to International Labour Organization documents, cooperatives in the post-genocide period flourished as many felt the need for protection and safety within the social grouping that they provided.

Here in Canada, the Rwandan diaspora does not have the resources to build the sort of communal neighbourhoods that provide safety, healing and community. A small but growing population in Canada, Rwandese families face the same housing issues other Toronto residents do, but without a historic legacy of property ownership. Although statistics on the rate of homeownership for Rwandan Canadians are scarce, the Black homeownership rate is only 45 percent, while it is 66.5 percent for the general Canadian populace. The reasons stretch from anti-Black racism to housing policy, but it also has lots to do with the generational effect. Generational Canadians have had the time to create communities when housing prices were lower, and because of that many have managed to hold onto legacy housing. The Rwandan community, and many other Black communities (though not all) have relatively recent histories in Canada and have become victims of the jump in housing prices over the last two decades.

In contrast, communities with a longer history in places like Toronto have managed to carve out areas of the city to protect their land rights. One great example is Toronto’s main Chinatown, which has avoided the worst of gentrification through collective organizations like the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust (TCLT).

The TCLT is a community-controlled effort to build an inclusive, culturally competent, and ever-evolving Chinatown in Toronto. Launched in 2023, the land trust is designed to protect the historic Chinatown community from condo developments. They acquire, develop and steward land, in perpetuity, for community needs and benefit. The organization was established by managing director Chiyi Tam, but is governed democratically by its members. An urban planning expert, Tam leveraged her experience with land trusts in both Parkdale and Kensington Market and decided to work with her community to save it from the host of developers buying properties along the Spadina Avenue neighbourhood.

Comparatively late to the game, the Rwandan and East African communities are now trying to get onto that property ladder. They’re searching for a sense of home, support, and for some, a sense of safety for the first time.

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A filmmaker by training, Musabimana is a bit out of his depth when talking about housing and development, but the African housing project is filled with experts who believe in his vision. A partner with the RCHC, Jonathan Okubay is the executive director of New Nakfa, a nonprofit organization that caters to Eritrean Canadian youth. He has a background in housing development and has become an instrumental part of moving from the CMHC’s solutions lab, which led to the model, into the development phase.

One of the major hurdles now, Okubay says, is getting the city on board to help drive down the price of construction. He says the project will cost anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 up front. “We’re moving into actual implementation and looking at sites for potential development, and at how we get the CMHC and the feds and the city involved in making the project feasible,” Okubay says. Part of that feasibility has to do with finding a place to build in an already crowded market. “Ideally, we would like to have it in a central location with access to transit nodes, schools and grocery stores,” he says. “Despite the difficulty…due to high land prices, in an ideal world, we would like it to be in Toronto.”

Canadian real estate is some of the most expensive in the world, and the costs are only growing. They’re wildly inaccessible in Toronto, where the price of materials and labour has grown to be one of the highest in Canada. The average low estimate for constructing the hard costs (labour, materials and equipment) of multifamily homes was $250 per square foot. In Calgary, the average low estimate was $190. Currently, Toronto’s hard cost estimates are roughly keeping pace with smaller cities like Phoenix and Denver, which sit at around $180 (U.S.)—or about $244.

Where Toronto exceeds most other cities in cost is at the government level. Fees and levies to build are astronomical in the city. A 2018 real estate study by Altus Group found that fees levied by the government added around $165,000 per unit for high-rise condos and $206,000 for single-family housing. Once the price of land, developer profits and government fees are taken into account, Toronto becomes almost inhospitable to any sort of affordable housing. This means finding a good developer is part of the myriad of hurdles for the community in general.

Musabimana, Okubay and their team have been stuck dealing with government bodies and talking to stakeholders, all the while holding the community close. It has been a process, but one guided by purpose. “I would say we are mainly searching for a land and development feasibility study, then the next phase is fundraising,” said Musabimana.

With all of these challenges, it would be easy for many to get discouraged. Still, a few years ago, no one would have thought this tiny little segment of the city would be part of such a radical vision. Musabimana is positive that the RCHC’s model, co-created with the community, will become a reality. Based on Okubay’s development experience, he believes they could start building the project by spring 2025.

If everything goes to plan, Toronto could soon have an African village in the middle of its urban jungle.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

It’s time to re-envision housing in Canada. Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation: we must not look to old models to solve our current problems. After all, it’s our current model that’s leading to mass homelessness.

No civilized group of people should allow that to happen to their neighbours, and we shouldn’t tolerate inaction. Let’s make our number one priority to help every homeless person in Canada. Some will need mental health support, some will need an economic solution, others will be suffering from addiction or abuse. Housing should be a right in Canada, like health care or education. It’s ridiculous that we will pay tens of thousands of dollars in hospital costs for a homeless person, over and over again, but do not help them pay their rent and end that cycle.

Secondly, let’s acknowledge there’s a growing population whose housing needs are not being served by the private sector, non-profits or government. Sadly, among this group are average working-class families, particularly young families, but it also includes immigrant and refugee families, students, First Nations, and single mothers. The cost of land in urban areas has made home ownership unattainable for many and increased the pool of renters. Worse yet, because there have been few incentives to build rental housing, low vacancy rates mean renting has become expensive, inadequate, or unavailable. Non-profit affordable housing or public housing should assist those who have fallen through the cracks. Yet, the abandonment of government funding for housing creates wait lists so long they defy credulity—too many end up homeless.

The confluence of these events has meant that much of the new private supply generated in both ownership and rental has been in high-end studio and one-bedroom suites. With their high costs and small size, these options aren’t suitable for many of the population types mentioned above. As we embark upon a new national housing strategy, an expanded non-profit housing sector could be the answer to many of these challenges. By removing the profit motive, the cost of developing housing is instantly cheaper, and by placing the burden of developing this housing into community groups there is an incentive to respond to the needs of families and others unserved by the market. In addition, unlike government-run housing, nonprofits have less bureaucracy, decisions are less political, and they have the ability to raise money from donations and volunteers. Expanding this model to serve average families, immigrants, and students instead of just vulnerable populations could be the key to ensuring that we have diverse, affordable, community-connected housing in the long-term.

Innovation will also mean looking to the sharing economy and assessing whether more communal living options could become mainstream. While shared gyms, pools, and laundry have been commonplace for years, we must now explore the limits of what level of sharing is marketable and attainable. Would tenants and owners be willing to accept quality over quantity by sharing their kitchens, living rooms, and more? Perhaps everything other than bedrooms should be reconsidered and we should look to new design options to maximize the utility of those spaces. Many of these things happen organically in repurposed homes or for roommates, but it’s time to re-examine it through a design and zoning lens in purpose-built rentals or condos.

Innovation in housing has to mean more than renting out your spare room or adding a Murphy bed. The next era is ripe for ideas on finance, design, and management. However, it’s going to take cooperation from all levels of government and a willingness to uncouple ourselves from some centuries of nostalgia about what a house looks like, what ownership looks like, and what our basic rights and entitlements are. If so, we may find a new era of opportunity, innovation, and our most important new social program.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

If you’re a This Magazine reader, you almost surely have an opinion about gentrification—that either it’s good or bad. Otherwise known as neighbourhood renewal, gentrification has come to dominate the discourse around modern urban development. And no wonder. When coupled with the hockey stick-shaped inflation in the housing market, gentrification has made urban living increasingly less affordable for those who don’t command six-figure salaries. These are the same people who do all the essential work that allows cities to function: teachers, nurses, personal support workers, public servants.

The issue I want to raise is how municipalities can become more proactive about the ripple effects of this rapidly accelerating process. Namely, I want to ask: Why should municipal officials go out of their way—as often seems to be the case—to improve neighbourhoods experiencing gentrification? Why don’t they instead pursue a form of negative planning—becoming incrementally less responsive to homeowner concerns, or promoting development projects that conflict with the quality of life in up-and-coming neighbourhoods? Why don’t local governments deliberately seek to make these areas less desirable as an antidote to run-away real estate prices?

Stay with me here. As someone who has been writing about municipal affairs for more than 20 years, I’m keenly aware my foregoing questions are more rhetorical thought experiment than workable policy proposal. But I still think it’s worth pulling this thread if only to explore how the cycles of gentrification, real estate speculation, and municipal re-investment reinforce and amplify one another—thus accelerating the interlinked affordability and housing crises that afflict big cities. The privileging of gentrification is baked into certain types of municipal policies—for example, the cash-for-density-bonus mechanisms, such as Ontario’s Section 37/45 rules. Under them, municipalities allow developers to add density in exchange for money invested in local improvements—new or improved parks, art spaces, public art, daycare spaces, etc. (Other jurisdictions have similar versions of these policies.)

The ostensible justification is that such funds are invested in public amenities that become necessary due to the incremental population growth that comes with increased density. The reality, however, is quite different.

In Toronto, for example, hundreds of millions of dollars in Section 37/45 funds, paid by high-rise condo developers, land in neighbourhoods experiencing intensification. But intensification is often a manifestation of desirability: developers build in sought-after areas that are already seeing an influx of capital and discretionary spending. The residents of these same neighbourhoods then receive additional benefits, in the form of new amenities, which, in turn, make their homes even more desirable, thus attracting other developers. In short, the financial benefits from these developer contributions accrues—in the form of higher property values—to the residents in these communities. It all gets very circular.

I’d argue that for cities facing skyrocketing housing prices (including rents), the only justified use of such funds in gentrifying neighbourhoods is the creation of new affordable housing. I am surprised to find myself agreeing with former Toronto councillor Doug Ford (brother of the late mayor Rob) who argued during the 2014 mayoral race that the millions collected from downtown developers should be spent to improve public amenities citywide, including less affluent communities that see little in the way of new development activity, and thus receive virtually no Section 37/45 money.

The point is that municipalities can, in fact, choose to impose a measure of control over the pace of gentrification and the intensity of the real estate speculation that accompanies it—one that could buttress the resiliency and sustainability of the entire city. A mindful approach would recognize that officially enabled gentrification will eventually become a self-consuming force that produces lovely neighbourhoods in which almost no one will be able to afford to live.

A lack of good statistics on the scope of Calgary's homeless population have hampered efforts. Creative Commons photo by Flickr User C Law.

Three years ago, the City of Calgary adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness. The much-lauded, and now much-copied, program was the first of its kind in Canada. Funded by the provincial government and led by the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the plan hinges on an ambitious “Housing First” strategy, which promises to move 1,800 of Calgary’s homeless population out of shelters and into their own apartments. No more than 10 percent of that population will return to homelessness, it pledges, and by 2018 no one will stay in an emergency shelter for more than a week before permanent housing is found. But does the golden-on-paper policy shine in practice?

Unfortunately, it’s hard to say. The City of Calgary has not taken a homeless count since May 2008, when the tally hit 4,060. This leaves no solid way to measure the plan’s progress. While the foundation has launched its own system to keep track of the population, it will be December before there’s an official number. The foundation does know that, as of January, 2,300 people had been moved into their own apartments, says Tim Richter, President and CEO. However, it’s difficult to determine whether others have replaced them, or even if they’re still living in housing.

Kristen Desjarlais-deKlerk, a former frontline worker at The Mustard Seed, an emergency shelter in downtown Calgary, is one of many who would like to see more emphasis on a “Housing First, with support” approach, including frequent visits from caseworkers, treatment for illnesses and addictions and life-skills assistance—services that are not always delivered with the necessary frequency and consistency now.

“We need to find a way to build a sense of community into these Housing First initiatives,” she says. Otherwise, risk factors that contribute to homelessness in the first place aren’t being addressed.

The program largely relies on the Calgary Housing Company to pay subsidies equivalent to 70 percent of the client’s rent. But what happens if the subsidy funding pool runs dry, and people are living in apartments they can’t afford with no skills and no support?

There are plenty of questions surrounding the plan’s long-term goals, and for now, not many answers. Even so, Calgary has started a necessary conversation. “The wonderful thing about the 10-year plan is that it put homelessness back on the agenda,” says Desjarlais-deKlerk, “And made it something that people saw as solvable and worth their time.”

Will your donated change help solve the problem of homelessness? Creative commons photo by Flickr user Alex E. Proimos

By Mary Dirmeitis and Megan Harris

You’re walking down the street when you see a panhandler on the sidewalk, holding out a cup for passersby to give change. You can feel the loonie in your pocket left over from the coffee you bought earlier — but do you give it to the person?

If you live in a major city, or even if you don’t, you’ve likely been in this situation before. The dialogue runs through your head. If you do give up your money, what will the person spend it on? Will they use it to buy something helpful for themselves, like food, or will they use it to feed an addiction? And then your personal debate goes further. Do you have a right to judge how another individual spends their money? Are you only giving to appease your own guilt?

It’s something we think about, and feel conflicted about, and so we talked to organizations who work with street-involved people to get their take on the ethics of giving change. We asked their views on the effects of donating directly to individuals, and how people can best use their limited dollars.

Matthew Pearce, Director General of The Old Brewery Mission in Montreal, says that if you think that you’re doing your bit to help homelessness by donating money to panhandlers, you’re wrong. Small change or daily necessities such as food or clothing may benefit a homeless person temporarily, but it keeps them in their current situation.

“Instead of giving that money, collect it over a little while and make a donation to an organization that provides real services to the homeless, not just food and lodging.” says Pearce. “Most [organizations] now, such as The Old Brewery Mission, have counseling programs to get people off the street.”

With the plethora of organizations across Canada, Pearce says that the people you see panhandling do not need money for food because there are shelters that provide that.

“There’s no reason for a homeless person to be hungry with the services that exist in the cities of Canada. And so they don’t need the money to eat. They don’t need the money to clothe themselves because our shelter and others have clothing depots, and we provide them with clothing, most of it new. So they don’t need it for clothing, they don’t need it for food, and it’s not going to be enough to allow them to pay for an apartment, so it’s not for housing. So then what is that money for?” Pearce asked.

Seren Gagne, a youth support worker at Resource Assistance for Youth (RaY) in Winnipeg, says that homeless youth will seek money to support a drug or alcohol habit, whether we give to them or not. Gagne therefore supports panhandling as an ethical way of getting money.

“Let’s say you’re a drug addict. What are you going to do?” said Gagne. “Are you going to panhandle? That’s a pretty safe way of getting money. What are the other options? Sell drugs, sell your body, assault someone. If you’re going to do that anyway, I don’t think panhandling is that much of a problem. Essentially it’s harm reduction. They’re squeegeeing [a car] or panhandling, instead of committing a crime or possibly selling their bodies.”

Although a correlation between addiction and homelessness does exist, some members of the public do not want to hand over change that might support a bad habit. Others feel that homeless people, as adults, are entitled to make their own decisions about how they live and what they do. Some prefer not to give money, but will hand over food or some other helpful item.

Myron Krause speaks about how gifts — a backpack, say, or a toque — address a short-term need, but do not contribute to eradicating the root causes of poverty. As Executive Director of The Mustard Seed, a non-profit organization committed to addressing the root causes of the the homelessness epidemic in Calgary, Krause sees a lack of safe, affordable housing as the most serious issue.

“When rents start at $800 and up just for a basement suite or one-room apartment, it’s not accessible for a lot of people,” said Krause. “So [with regards to] panhandling, the money we give is probably not going to address the need for people to be able to afford their rent. But we as an organization can use that money to try and create affordable housing and that’s what we’re doing.”

A more valuable thing to do could be to donate your time — for instance, serving at a soup kitchen or volunteering at a shelter. That way, you can see direct results of your work.

“It’s great to volunteer your time,” said Gagne. “That’s better, that’s doing more for yourself, and doing more for other people. You’re not just simply doing the act of handing out money, you’re taking the time to really get to know these people and maybe interact with them on a personal level.”

Pearce believes that confronting the roots of homelessness is the most valuable act.

“It’s hard to see a positive effect [of panhandling] except that it is an opportunity for people in the city to come face to face with homelessness,” said Pearce. “And they have an option then to give money or not. They also have the option to show the person a little bit of respect, look them in the eye, show them they exist. The life of homelessness is a life of exclusion, you always feel on the fringes, you always feel like you’re almost invisible.”

Pearce also spoke about the concept of donating respect. Even if you don’t want to give the change in your pocket, or if you have none to give, look the person in the eye and tell them that. And then wish them a good day and move on.

Giving comes in all forms, whether it’s a small donation, a personalized budget, or necessities for life on the street. And the decision to engage in this transaction is ultimately a personal one. However, the causes for poverty and homelessness are vast and complex, and there are countless organizations to contribute to who have made it their mission to address these causes and eradicate homelessness for good.

Above all, Pearce also says people should not give up hope in regards to helping the homeless. “Keep going,” Pearce said, “Because it will change.”

Michael Shapcott is the Director of Affordable Housing and Social Innovation for the Wellesley Institute, an independent research institute working to advance population health and equity through policy development. He is recognized as one of Canada’s leading housing policy experts and is a long-time housing and homelessness advocate.  He took some time to talk with us about the upcoming G20 Summit and what it means for low-income people in Canada and around the world.

Q&A

Jesse Mintz: You are very involved in the housing and income equity struggle on a local and national level. Can you talk a little about some of the issues facing low-income Canadians?

Michael Shapcott: This country has undergone a shift in the last decade. We’ve had all the indicators point to not only a big growth in visible homelessness in Toronto and across the country—this includes people who are living in homeless shelters and on the street—but we’ve also seen a corresponding growth in housing insecurity, that is people who are a little less visible but may be in overcrowded housing, substandard housing or unaffordable housing. So while we’ve seen this huge increase in housing insecurity and homelessness in this country in the past decade, we’ve also seen the face of homelessness change as well. Whereas, say, 20 years ago, by far the vast majority of homeless people were single middle-aged people, most often male, we began to see in the 1990s the rise of family homelessness, youth homelessness, and seniors homelessness. The situation across the country is pretty grim, and it’s not just something that Canadians have noticed. In 2007 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing visited Canada on a fact-finding mission and he confirmed how desperate the situation was in the country.

Overall what we have is a very grim and serious picture in terms of housing insecurity. That, of course, affects not only the individuals and their ability to find a good home but it also has a profound impact on personal health. The affordable housing crisis is triggering in turn a health crisis that is affecting individuals. It’s also disrupting communities. We’re seeing an increase in polarization in a number of urban areas across the country between rich neighborhoods and poorer ones. On top of the health and community aspect, the housing crisis is having an impact on the economy on a local and national level. We’re seeing more and more business, such as TD Economics on the national level and Toronto Board of Trade on a local level, come out and claim that attracting and retaining workers has become more difficult as a result of the lack of affordable housing. They recognize that the social dimensions of the affordable housing crisis affect businesses as well as individuals. The housing crisis is directly impacting a national health crisis, disruptions to our urban environments and the economy. So the overall picture of Canada’s housing market is of a steadily deteriorating situation and there are plenty of statistics and personal stories that illustrate what’s happening.

Jesse Mintz: It is obviously a very complex issue but, generally speaking, what factors can you point to as causes for the affordable housing crisis in Canada?

Michael Shapcott: There is no question that there are a number of mitigating factors at play. But the key factor that has been driving things has been the erosion of government support for affordable housing. The simple reality—and everybody in the country knows this—is that housing is very expensive and it’s always been that way. About two-thirds of Canadians have adequate incomes to afford housing and they are able to buy or rent a home and still have enough money left over for food and all the other necessities. The really enduring problem is what about the roughly one-third of Canadians who are low-, moderate-, and in some cases even middle-income who are finding it increasingly difficult to rent housing in this country.

So the number one driver in terms of the deteriorating housing situation has been the high cost of housing. What we’ve seen, though, right up until the start of the recession was that Canada was still producing near record amounts of new housing. So the problem obviously wasn’t that we weren’t building enough housing. The problem was that housing is too expensive for an increasing number of Canadians. Before the 1990s the issue was addressed by a national housing program. There were several versions of it but the most significant version, launched in 1973, created a plan to ensure that people who were excluded from the private housing market would have access to an affordable home. The federal government worked in conjunction with the provinces, municipalities, private sector and non-profits. So from 1973 to 1993 the government funded over 600,000 new affordable homes, mainly non-profit and co-op housing, across the country. While there certainly were housing problems for some Canadians in the ’70s and ’80s, we  didn’t see this sort of mass housing insecurity and homeless for that period because governments were paying attention to people who were excluded from the private housing markets. By 1993, though, the federal government stopped all funding for new affordable housing. In 1996 the federal government decided that it would transfer the administration of most federally funded housing projects to the provinces and territories, and in 1998 the federal government decided to partially commercialize Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is our national housing agency and the lead agency supporting affordable housing programs in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. Virtually every Canadian province in one way or another mirrored the federal moves, downloading funding to municipalities, and the pattern was established of governments not only not creating any new affordable housing but also stopping subsidization of existing affordable housing projects from previous programs. This occurred simultaneously as populations were increasing and poverty and income inequality were growing exponentially in Canada. All these factors together led to the perfect storm of our current and growing housing crisis.

I also want to make clear that the governments in the 1990s didn’t just single out housing programs. Right across the spectrum there were cuts in a whole range of government social expenditures. Income transfer programs, everything from welfare to employment insurance, you name it—all the programs designed to put a little bit of money in the pockets of people who don’t have much money  were dramatically cut.

We see in the 1990s, at both the provincial and federal level, a real determination to cut social expenditures to the point where Canada, which used to be near the top in terms of percentage of GDP spent on public social expenditures  when compared with the other nations of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), more recently we’ve slipped down close to the bottom of the list. In 2008, the OECD released a report called “Growing Unequal” which was focused on poverty and income inequality in the 31 countries that compose the main countries of the OECD, the richest and most developed countries in the world; one of the things that the OECD noted was that up until 1995, Canada was ahead of the rest of the OECD in terms of reducing poverty and reducing income inequality but after 1995 Canada fell behind the rest of the OECD and in some measures Canada is among the worst in the OECD in terms of poverty and income inequality. So what you have is a radical change in political direction in the 1990s which led to wholesale cuts in housing policies, in housing funding, plus a whole related series of government social expenditures and the net impact of all of that is the situation that were facing today.

Jesse Mintz: So if I’m understanding you correctly, directional changes in federal policy have led to a confluence of factors contributing to the housing crisis specifically and to a whole slew of social ills as a result. Is there a connection you can draw between Canada’s domestic policy and the issues facing low-income Canadians and international policies and the issues facing people of the global south?

Michael Shapcott: There’s no question. The politics that led to the massive erosion of housing and other social programs in Canada in the 1990s at the national level are often referred to on the international level as neoliberal policies. The neoliberal agenda is basically to shrink the role of government and enhance the role of the private market. It was explicitly adopted with the Mulroney government in 1984 and it was followed by the Chretien-Martin administration and of course the current Harper government. The neoliberal agenda stands very much in sharp contrast with the previous notion that there is an important and legitimate role for the government in terms of dealing with issues that markets couldn’t satisfy, issues such as equity and access to basic human needs. What has begun with the onset of the recession, which was triggered entirely by a failure of private markets, is that people have begun asking serious questions about the neoliberal agenda of unregulated private markets in terms of its failures to meet people’s needs. There is a talk of a new role for government, of government regulation of the private sector that seeks to ensure that everyone within the country has access to basic needs and basic rights.

One of the issues at the G20 summit, of course, is that you have a number of governments coming—the Canadian government and the coalitions of Germany and England, respectively—that are firmly committed to the neoliberal ideology of small governments and big markets. You have the U.S. government that, while under the Bush administration, was very committed to the neoliberal agenda but has since made overtures under Obama to more regulations in the aftermath of the recession. What we’ll see at the G20 meeting is a very enthusiastic group of cheerleaders for the neoliberal agenda on one side and on the other hand at least a few voices saying that the recession is a wakeup call and that governments have to figure out a new way of working.

Jesse Mintz: So you don’t think that the G20 is prepared or even interested in addressing the underlying issues of income equity on an international level?

Michael Shapcott: I think that it’s hard to say. It’s certainly on the domestic agenda in every G20 country, Canada included. And while the critical issues affecting people internationally are very much there, often times the leadership of a country doesn’t reflect the political will of the people in terms of direction of the G20. There are some interesting trends beginning to take shape in many parts of the world. One of the most important ones, I think, is emerging in Australia, the U.S., Britain and many other European nations, and it’s beginning slowly here in Canada as well. It is the idea of the social economy. The social economy is very complex but in its simplest form it exists between the private sector of business and the public sector of government and uses traditional economic tools geared towards meeting basic human needs as opposed to the private sector mentality of maximizing profit. The best example at the international level are micro credit organizations like the Grameen Bank that started in Bangladesh but has since gone global. It is not simply profit motivated but is organized very explicitly on a social economy basis.  Canada, with the exception of Quebec, lags behind the United States and most of Europe in terms of developing our social economy. Almost certainly the social economy will be nowhere near the radar screen at the G20 because, for some reason, the social sector gets very little attention from governments despite its often disproportionate contribution to the overall economy. In Canada, for instance, the non-profit sector contributes six times as much to the GDP as the auto manufacturing industry. There are literally hundreds of thousands of non-profit organizations providing a variety of services and employing a huge number of people generating economic activity. Yet they’re not on the radar screen.

We would love to see a real dialogue at this year’s G20. Instead of this polarized debate between people on the one side who think that the private sector needs free rein to maximize profits, and people on the other side who want to build big government to deal with the big social and environmental issues of the 21st century, we want to develop a third alternative. We think the most sensible way out of this mess is to address the social economy. It’s neither big governments nor big markets, but a whole range of social enterprises—some of which may look like traditional businesses from the outside but are in fact geared towards social objectives rather then profit. There are examples in Toronto of modest little social initiatives like an organization called Gateway Linens that is run by Gateway Homeless Shelter as an employment project for men who live in the shelter. There are more and more examples like this around the country everyday but, with the exception of Quebec, the social economy is not organized yet in Canada.

Jesse Mintz: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. What rallies can we expect to see you at this week?

Michael Shapcott: I’m going to be at the big one that the CLC is part of (the People First rally, on June 26). I’m also working behind the scenes. We know that at summits like this there is a lot of media attention either on the official meetings—which are pretty low key because we know by this point that most of the official communiqués have all been drafted and the meetings serve more as a photo opportunity then anything else—and there will be a lot of media attention aimed at the antics at street level. We think it would be great if there was some media attention both locally and internationally using the summit as a way of focusing on real solutions to move us forward. We’re going to do our best within the “Cone of Silence,” or the “security bubble” to connect with media and try and interest them to report on issues other then the action on the streets or the communiqués flowing out of the press offices of the leaders.

One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird.

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization that launched the campaign as some 350,000 visitors descended on Vancouver in February to soak up the so-called first socially sustainable Olympics.

The Red Tent campaign was pitched in response to the predicted shortage of shelter beds in the city during the Games and the failure of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its government partners to deliver on promises related to housing and civil liberties. The distinctive tents bear the statement, “Housing is a Right. This tent is protected by Section 7 of the Charter”—the right to life, liberty and security of person. They will be popping up in urban centres across the country as Pivot expands its action, which was inspired by a landmark constitutional case: last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right of homeless people to set up temporary shelters on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The campaign will continue until, Pivot says, the ultimate Olympic legacy is realized: A funded national housing strategy. Canada is the only G8 country without one. In April 2009, NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) stepped up to the podium with a private member’s bill to push for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians, but the Conservatives didn’t support the initiative. There were Olympic dreams that Vancouver would set a golden example of how to tackle homelessness, but when the road to the Games got bumpy, promises were torched. Let’s look at what happened.

During the bid stage in 2002, a coalition of environmental and social activists and academics formed the Games-neutral Impact on Community Coalition with “the purpose of maximizing the opportunities presented by the Games and mitigating the potentially negative impacts on Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods.” The IOCC successfully pushed for a referendum on the Games, and together with the bid committee and its government partners, developed the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement (PDF), a set of promises that was incorporated into Vancouver’s bid book and was considered binding.

The statement addresses 14 areas—including civil liberties and public safety, housing, and input into decision-making—and makes 37 specific promises. It’s been touted as an unprecedented pledge by a mega-event host city to work with low-income communities and promote social sustainability, but it materialized into little more than public relations puffery.

While the city boasted about hiring binners to collect bottles and cans left around town (meeting a commitment under employment and training) and VANOC proudly made 100,000 event tickets available for $25 each (ticking off the box next to affordable Games events), housing and civil liberties promises were glossed over.

After a quarter of Vancouverites cited homelessness as their greatest concern in a 2006 poll, ignoring the housing crisis was a Quatchi-sized gaffe. Worst of all, it broke the promise that no one would be made homeless as a result of the Olympics.

According to the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Vancouver increased by 135 percent from 670 in 2002 to 1,576 in 2008. The tally is believed to greatly underestimate the reality, given the difficultly in tracking down and interviewing the homeless, and housing advocates estimated there were between 4,000 and 6,000 homeless during the Olympics. (There were an estimated 5,500 athletes and officials.)

There was a promise that no one would be involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the Games. But according to the IOCC, approximately 1,300 low-income single room occupancies (SROs)—many contained in old hotels on East Hastings and considered the last option before homelessness—have been lost since the bid was won and the city is not following its own policy to replace rooms at a one-to-one rate. The city defends its record, making another promise that from 2003 to the end of 2012 it will have nearly 2,000 additional non-market units built, compared to a loss of over 1,400 units. However, these numbers don’t take into consideration rent increases that have made SROs unaffordable for low-income residents, nor does it account for rooms held vacant by landlords. Further, the city counts provincially owned rooms as new social housing, when they are newly social, but not new accommodations.

Before the Games, condos were outpacing social housing in the Downtown Eastside at a rate of three to one, and SRO residents were being booted out of their homes as landlords renovated so they could raise rents and make room for Olympic visitors. The IOCC went so far as to file a human rights complaint with the United Nations in July 2009 (PDF), saying hundreds of renters could be evicted prior to the Olympics because of loopholes in tenancy legislations, which allows for these “renovictions.”

An early version of the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment to provide affordable housing proposed by the city of Vancouver included a three-tier housing model at the Olympic Village: market price, moderate income and core-need. However, when a new city council was elected in 2005, one of its first moves was to play Monopoly with the model and commit only 25 percent of the units to “affordable housing,” and of those 252 units, between 30 and 50 percent for core-need individuals. In February 2009, the city reported that the cost of affordable housing at the village had risen from $65 million in 2006 to $110 million. And as of print time, housing advocates feared the plan would be axed completely (the city said a final decision was yet to be made).

Since they failed on the housing front, in a desperate attempt to clean up the streets before the Games, the B.C. Liberals pushed through the controversial Assistance to Shelter Act in November. Dubbed the “Olympic Kidnapping Act,” the law gives police the power to haul homeless people off the streets, pile them into paddy wagons and deposit them at shelters when there’s an extreme weather alert, which can occur in Vancouver when the temperature hovers around zero and there’s heavy rainfall (read: winter in the city). After activists rallied against the act—housing experts came forward to denounce it and Pivot said it was prepared to challenge its constitutionality in court—the chief of the Vancouver police said his officers will only use “minimal, non-forceful touching” to persuade people to accept a lift to a shelter, and will back off if they are met with resistance.

Another Inner-City Inclusive commitment was to commit to a “timely public consultation that is accessible to inner-city neighbourhoods before any security legislation or regulations are finalized,” but the community only became aware of the draconian act when a document leaked, and hasn’t been involved in any meaningful consultations.

In a last desperate attempt to quell negative media attention, BC Housing and the city teamed up to intercept international journalists at the edge of the Downtown Eastside, before they could get to the gritty stretch. They set up an information centre, Downtown Eastside Connect, at the shiny new Woodward’s site, where they shared their “successes” in tackling homelessness, including the building of social housing on 14 city-owned sites. There’s no mention of the fact that construction of these sites was delayed and not one was ready in time for the Games. The cost of the propaganda kiosk: $150,000.

Inevitably, foreign journalists found their way to the Downtown Eastside and wondered how the world’s first “socially sustainable” Games could look like this: Human wreckage, open drug use, prostitution, crumbling buildings. And a legacy of red tents instead of homes.

How could all of these promises be broken? There was no budget to implement the recommendations, including no funding for an independent watchdog; there was no enforcement mechanism and a lack of accountability; many of the goals were not measurable and the statements were wishywashy and open for interpretation. But perhaps that was the point: Get Vancouverites behind the bid with promises of social sustainability, and then hope we forget about it when the circus comes to town.

Jacques Rogge's bank of Olympic televisions (artist's impression).

When Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, checks into his Vancouver hotel suite a few weeks from now, he will find (as he flops, exhausted, no doubt, from the strain of private jet travel) a “video wall,” paid for by the citizens of British Columbia. The bank of televisions are a requirement of IOC regulations, which state that the president must have enough screens to be able to watch every Olympic event underway at any given time—simultaneously.

The white-glove treatment being extended to Count Rogge of Belgium and the 111 other IOC members—the clutch of industrialists, backwater bureaucrats, tinpot generals, and dissipated royalty who preside over the Olympic “movement”—puts the economic reality of 2010 into sharp and sickening perspective.

Somehow in this country it became perversely more politically viable to spend $1.98 billion widening B.C.’s Sea to Sky Highway for a two-week international event than it is to implement a national housing strategy to aid Canada’s estimated 300,000 homeless (Canada is the only G8 country without such a plan). Today, more than 600,000 Canadian children live in poverty, a number that hasn’t budged since 1989’s doomed Campaign 2000 parliamentary pledge to eradicate child poverty by the turn of the millennium—yet $900 million will be spent on security costs, battle-hardening Vancouver against the Olympic crowds. The opening ceremonies of Vancouver 2010 are budgeted at $58 million, while the B.C. provincial government cut $20 million in arts funding just last summer.

It’s not possible to draw a direct line from the ledger that pays for renovating the Vancouver Convention Centre ($883 million) to the one that dictates that Canada pays among the lowest unemployment insurance rates in the industrialized world. But in a national sense, it is sad to contemplate the collective priorities expressed by these decisions: to choose the splashy over the prosaic; the grand, short-lived gesture over the incremental improvement; the rich and famous over the poor and marginalized. Or to furnish a Belgian count’s plush hotel room with more televisions than one man can watch, while thousands sleep in the street.