Affordable housing a ‘worthwhile investment’

Three related things announced last week will seem counter-intuitive to many Albertans, but are not.

First is the disastrous but unsurprising news that Alberta’s books are drowning in even more red ink than initially forecast by the NDP government. On June 29, Finance Minister Joe Ceci announced that in the fiscal year that ended March 31, the province borrowed a whopping $13 billion. What’s most shocking is that fully $8.6 billion of it was borrowed for government operations. That’s akin to you and me taking out a loan and spending 66 per cent of it on food and keeping the lights on. It’s madness and unsustainable.

So, what on earth is the province doing announcing, just a couple of days prior to Ceci’s alarming fiscal update, that it will spend $1.2 billion on affordable housing?

Well, on the same day Ceci shocked the province with his budget update, a very helpful study was released by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy that, in part, answers that question.

Calgary — not Vancouver or Toronto — is the costliest city in Canada in which to rent low-cost housing. In Calgary, a single parent pays an exorbitant 66 per cent of income on one of the 20 per cent least expensive one-bedroom rental apartments in the city. In Vancouver, that same single parent with one child would spend 54 per cent of income on a low-end apartment; in Toronto it would be 55 per cent.

Calgary tops the price list again for the lowest-priced two-bedroom apartment rented by a couple with two children. In Calgary, 55 per cent of that family’s income goes to rent, while in Vancouver it’s 50 per cent, and in Toronto it’s 46 per cent.

The U of C study, written by Ron Kneebone, director of social and economic policy, and Rita Wilkins, research associate at The School of Public Policy, looks at how, in most cities, housing costs for the poor have increased over the past 15 years leading to an “affordability crisis.”

“Spending $1.2 billion on affordable housing in Alberta is a very worthwhile investment,” Kneebone said in an interview Friday.

The $1.2 billion will be spent over the next five years to build 4,000 units. Currently, more than 15,000 Alberta families are on the affordable-housing wait list.

In another study published last year by Kneebone and Wilkins, data from 51 cities across Canada looked at how many emergency shelter beds per 100,000 people are offered. Calgary has four times more emergency shelter beds per 100,000 people than Montreal. Why? The answer is obvious. In Montreal, a lone parent with one child can rent a low-priced apartment for just 31 per cent of their income, less than half what a similar person in Calgary, at 66 per cent, would have to pay. In other words, they have more of a cushion for that unexpectedly high heating bill or reduction in wages owing to illness.

Numerous studies from many jurisdictions show that homelessness costs more than providing supportive housing to the chronically homeless. People experiencing homelessness access the health care and judicial systems more. Find them a home, however, and suddenly that person is no longer receiving tickets for public urination, sleeping on a park bench or travelling on public transit without a ticket, in something called the warrant cycle. They also have fewer medical crises and all of this costs society far less.

So, while some people may be scratching their heads about a new big spending program to build more affordable housing just days before the discouraging news about Alberta’s bottom line, it’s vital to remember that homelessness is not only devastating for the person experiencing it, but it costs everybody and stresses our police (who should let benchsleeping people lie), courts and health-care system.

Kneebone says there are two ways to address housing affordability: either increase income support given to the very poor or reduce housing costs. If the market isn’t providing the solution, then the government must do so. That will not only save lives and personal dignity, it will also help the province’s bottom line.