We all need safe housing
Dear editor: “The City of Kelowna is developing an anti-homelessness strategy, called Journey Home, that includes construction of 110 new long-term housing units and various support programs at an estimated cost of $47 million over five years.
Local officials hope most of the required money will come from the provincial and federal governments” (Courier, June 12).
“As you say, we’ll always have our poor, but hopefully we’ll have housing for them,” Coun. Gail Given said at a May 12 council meeting.
“Hopefully” — that’s the best we can get?
In an election year when the city can find $4.4 million to purchase one property for future park land and contribute $60,000 for a piece of public art to developer Bentall Kennedy (with assets of $5.5 billion), they expect everybody else to come to the rescue and pick up the tab for providing safe and affordable housing.
For a major city of our size, it is bordering on criminal negligence that we don’t have a civic or municipal housing authority to provide supportive and subsidized public housing. Municipal politicians and the business community pander to rely on faithbased non-profits, activist groups and other NGOs to do this tough work for them.
The right to housing is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. And yet, 70 years and hundreds of studies later, domestic law in Canada does not formally recognize the right to adequate housing — it is not in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Constitution Act of 1982, or the subject of national legislation.
In 2012, MP Marie-Claude Morin introduced Bill C-400, a bill which proposed a national housing strategy that would “ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians.” Bill C-400 was defeated in 2013 by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
Having safe housing is the cornerstone of addressing the challenges of homelessness resulting from poverty, mental health and addictions, and can address truth and reconciliation with our First Nations.
Homelessness in Canada has reached crisis levels, yet Canada remains the only G7 country without a national housing strategy. Housing every Canadian adequately sounds like it might be an expensive proposition, but advocates argue that the cost of leaving people homeless or precariously housed is much higher.
Richard Ratton
Kelowna