Advancing our provincial election priorities
Hamilton will host a public summit April 13 to get feedback on local election issues
Hamilton is facing a number of key issues relative to the support it receives from other levels of government around emergency medical services, affordable housing, infrastructure and financial growth. Since the late nineties, through a combination of downloading and budget reductions by upper levels of government, pressures on municipal governments to provide services to their communities is an increasingly difficult task. We will be highlighting these issues ahead of the June provincial election at the 2018 Hamilton Summit on Friday, April 13 in City Hall council chambers. The event is intended to generate discussion about the issues and solutions that will help us all better serve our growing community.
This is the first of two articles and focuses on emergency medical services and affordable housing. A subsequent article will discuss infrastructure and financial growth.
Hamilton Paramedic Service
Changes are needed to better support Hamilton paramedics in delivering service. The province only funds 50 per cent of the cost of any service enhancements in the year following implementation.
This lag in funding results in the City having to fund 100 per cent of service enhancement costs for the year in which the enhancement was approved. Over the last four years, this requirement has imposed an additional municipal tax burden of approximately $2.2 million dollars for required operating enhancements. The formula needs to change so that provincial funding represents 50 per cent of the cost of land ambulance services for the year in which the costs occur.
There continues to be extensive off-load delays in hospitals. In 2017, the Hamilton Paramedic Service had more than 26,000 hours of ambulance off-load delays. These delays, and the resulting lack of available ambulances able to respond to 911 calls, are not acceptable.
We need the province to enforce the recommended transfer of care time (30 minutes) or cover the cost of off-load delays.
There have also been challenges with the central ambulance communication centre (CACC), which dictates which calls to respond to, by which means (ie. lights and siren) and where patients will be transported. The challenges relate to information sharing, call prioritization and delays in needed system improvements. To improve efficiencies, the City is requesting that the province maintain its regulatory oversight and funding of the CACC, but shift operational responsibility to the City.
Investment in social and affordable housing
Social housing was downloaded to the municipalities in 2001. The City received one-time capital funding of $3.7 million which was inadequate to support the assets transferred to us which needed over $100 million in capital repairs. Since then, Hamilton has invested significant local funding to preserve and support its social housing assets in an effort to help the 6,300 households on the housing wait list. To date, our local discretionary commitment to social housing infrastructure totals $26.5 million, but the City can’t commit the required level of funding from the property tax base. Assessments put the estimated capital repair deficiency for social housing at approximately $200 million over the next 10 years.
The City’s 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Action Plan targets 300 new affordable rental units per year, but we are falling short. In the last 10 years, little new housing has been built in Hamilton, the existing stock continues to age, and rents continue to increase. Despite Hamilton’s local investments in housing, it cannot meet the need for new rental housing development from the property tax base.
There is also a chronic shortage of permanent housing with supports in Hamilton. Since 2003, the province has invested more than $4 billion, the largest affordable housing investment in its history. While historically the federal government has been an active funding partner of the housing and homelessness services, since the 1980s there has been a steady reduction in federal funding for housing and homelessness, which has worsened the problem in Ontario.
Since 2013, the province has invested $293.7 million in homelessness prevention. Hamilton’s annual funding for homelessness prevention is approximately $19 million, which helps us support a range of housing with supports and homelessness prevention services, but is not sufficient to meet increasing costs. It will limit our ability to contribute to the province’s goal of ending chronic homelessness by 2025. We need other levels of government to commit to increasing investment in new affordable rental housing development, and provide long-term stable funding, and funding allocations for Hamilton that are reflective of the need.
At the Summit on April 13, we look forward to a timely and public discussion about these and other key issues facing Hamilton, and the ways we can work together to meet the needs of our growing community.
For more information about the Summit visit www.hamilton.ca/hamiltonsummit2018.