Niagara gets $5.4M to fight homelessness
New funding from the provincial government will provide homes for at least 63 homeless Niagara residents, and give them critical supports they need to stay off the streets.
Regional Chairman Alan Caslin has announced that Niagara received $5.4 million through the provincial Ministry of Housing’s Home for Good program.
The funding will allow the Region to build 23 supportive housing units, as well as provide another 40 units from existing housing in Niagara.
When it comes to affordable housing in Niagara, there are two specific groups of people who need help, said community services commissioner Adrienne Jugley.
There are people who have a place to live, but for whom housing is too expensive and strains their resources to the breaking point. The other group are people on a waiting list, for which a single person in need of affordable housing can wait as long as 10 years, Jugley said, because demand is so acute.
The funding through the Home for Good program is for those residents who don’t have housing at all, she said.
The causes of homelessness are varied and complex, and simply putting someone in an apartment doesn’t address those issues, which can include mental health and addiction problems.
So the new funding is being used to create “supportive housing” — units that provide direct access to critical support services in addition to giving someone a place to live.
Jugley said the Region is reaching out to community agencies to act as partners in the Home for Good program to provide those key services.
She said without those services, people who are housed could end up homeless again. That is not just a bad outcome for an individual person, but ends up costing the community as well.
Jugely said if someone wants to reduce the issue to dollars and cents, research shows it costs a community more to have someone living on the streets than it does to house them.
Data provided by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, drawing on several Canadian studies, shows the institutional costs of homelessness are substantially greater than providing supportive housing.
A Simon Fraser University study, for instance, said it costs $55,000 per person, per year to leave someone homeless in British Columbia. Those costs include medical, police and social service agency responses. Supportive housing, on the other hand, costs $37,000.
Other studies put the costs of as high as $134,000 a year per homeless person versus $10,000 to $25,000 annually for supportive housing.
Caslin said funding for Niagara through the provincial Community Homelessness Prevention Initiative has fallen short of the region’s needs for years, especially when compared to other communities with similar needs like Hamilton.
Since taking office, Caslin has pushed for the province to change its funding formula to better reflect the reality of homelessness in Ontario. Although the province has yet to reconsider the formula, he said the funding for the Home for Good program directed at Niagara is a recognition of the need here.
“Funding has already been allocated, so we aren’t going to see the formula change within this budget. But it is something we continue to bring to the attention of the province,” Caslin said.