Don’t confuse homeless people with those fighting addictions, mental illness

To begin to solve the homelessness issue in Niagara, it’s time to stop thinking of it as one problem.

It’s actually two, and solutions for one don’t necessarily apply to the other.

There are people living on low income or government assistance, possibly older or disabled, who have been squeezed out of the housing market due to rising land values and rent bills.

And there are others who are homeless because they’re experiencing mental health issues or are debilitated by addictions.

It’s not fair to either group to lump them together simply as ‘homeless people.’

For the first group, the low-rent places where they used to live have gone up in price far faster than their income has.

There are fewer units available anyway, due to everything from rental homes being turned into short-term vacation properties to urban sprawl that drives up prices all over as people with money leave the big cities.

To make more properties available for low-income earners, government incentives are needed to make it financially attractive to landlords.

The Landlord Tenant Act should be amended, too. As it stands, it affords protections for renters, yet landlords will tell you it’s a long, expensive process to get rid of a bad tenant.

That’s a good way to discourage affordable housing. It has to change.

That’s one group. And then there are people who are homeless and living on the street due to addictions and, often, mental illness.

Their problems can’t be solved simply by putting a roof over their heads, though that’s still important.

There are stop-gap measures already in place, such as overnight shelters, programs like Out of the Cold and Out of the Heat, even allowing homeless people to live in municipal parks.

Those are good and necessary — something has to be done, after all — but they’re not the answer.

But to continue to lump these two groups of people together isn’t fair to either, and only buys us time while we find a better way to change things.

To start, people suffering with addictions and mental illness need better access to treatment. There’s no other way.

That means governments at all levels need to commit to spending more on hospital or treatment centre beds, support for family members and stricter laws to ensure people with a mental illness stay on their meds.

Earlier this week Emily Kovacs, executive director at the Niagara Folk Arts Multicultural Centre, proposed trying a program that she said has worked in Toronto.

The respite model is “not a shelter. It’s not supportive housing,” she said.

“It’s a low-barrier model … to support individuals who are using opioids or they’re having active psychosis, they have a place that is safe, that is supportive” and with minimal rules so they don’t risk being ejected.

Kovacs, who worked 19 years in Toronto’s homelessness-services community, is still waiting for Niagara Region officials to respond to her proposal.

At the very least, it makes sense for Niagara to study Toronto’s model to see if it would work here. But it, too, is only part of the solution. It safely takes them off the streets for part of the day, but without better access to care and cure their problems won’t go away.

In the end, the onus is on governments to better fund the treatment at community health and addiction recovery centres and through agencies like the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Affordable public housing, and medical care for addictions and mental health are expensive undertakings. Are you willing to pay a little more for it?

Until the answer is yes, the problem will continue to get worse.