Rental supplement loss will cut deep

For Melissa Picard, a small rental supplement made a big difference for her kids.

“It was more having freedom to not go to Value Village for clothes and go to Walmart,” she said. “Just those small differences.”

Picard was raising five kids when she went through a bad divorce and ended up in a women’s shelter. She then found a three-bedroom apartment for $1,250. With her child tax benefits, her social assistance payments, and other sources of income, she was still spending half her money on rent.

But then she heard about the Saskatchewan Rental Housing Supplement. It made life a little bit easier. She still couldn’t afford more than the “basics,” and struggled to pay whichever bill was most past due. But life was possible.

“Even with the supplement, it was hard,” she said. “So I can’t imagine it getting cut back even more than it was.”

Now families in her situation will have to imagine precisely that. The government announced Tuesday it will suspend the rental housing supplement effective June 30. Existing recipients won’t be affected, but no new applications will be processed after that date.

Housing advocates are warning the change is going to make more Saskatchewan people homeless.

“The reality is, for people that are actually on social assistance, this benefit has a real impact on what housing they’re able to afford,” said Shawn Fraser, a former Regina city councillor who now works at the city’s YMCA.

The supplement provides a roughly $260 monthly top-up to eligible people with disabilities, and more than $300 for low-income families with children. According to Peter Gilmer of the Regina AntiPoverty Ministry, the money was enough to get benefits into “the same ballpark” as rents in Regina.

He said the loss is going to create “very dire consequences” for the people he works with.

The government justified the change by pointing to high vacancy rates in Saskatchewan, which are now roughly seven per cent in Regina and 10 per cent in Saskatoon “The market has changed,” Social Services Minister Paul Merriman said Wednesday. In theory, rents should be falling in tandem, but that simply isn’t happening.

According to a forecast by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rent for a two-bedroom apartment is set to hit $1,120 for 2018, slightly higher than the year before. Yet shelter allowance through social assistance is stuck at $711 for a family with two children living in Regina, and at $459 for an unemployable individual.

Rochelle Berenyi of Carmichael Outreach said it’s impossible to find a one-bedroom apartment for that kind of money. Carmichael frequently posts rental lists for their clients, she said, and the cheapest units are around $600.

She’s heard the same message again and again: “I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have this supplement.”

Merriman pointed out that rent-geared-to-income housing is available in cities across Saskatchewan. Government data shows that there are 443 vacant Saskatchewan Housing Corporation units in Regina alone, and 299 in Saskatoon. He also stressed that the province is working on a bilateral agreement with the federal government, which is rolling out a Canada Housing Benefit for 2020.

Berenyi, Gilmer and Fraser all wonder about what will happen in the meantime.

“My question is, supposing this puts one family into homelessness, what’s the long-term cost of that?” asked Fraser.

But Gilmer is worried.

“This will definitely have an impact in terms of combating homelessness, no doubt,” he said. “This makes a dire situation that much worse.”