Homelessness called a top priority for Niagara
Residents offered their thoughts as regional council prepares budget
Niagara’s growing homelessness problem was overwhelmingly the top priority among Niagara residents, when they were asked how the Region should spend their tax money next year.
Pollara Strategic Insights vicepresident Leslie Martin said participants in recent online focus groups discussing budget priorities for 2021 indicated homelessness and affordable housing was “top for everyone.”
“Everyone thought about how important this was … The residents all said, ‘Yes, this is a problem,’” she told regional councillors during a budget meeting Thursday.
She conducted five focus group discussions, with a total of 35 respondents participating, in late September as part of the Region’s budget consultation process.
More than 2,300 Niagara residents also completed online surveys to share their opinions about spending priorities.
Martin said focus group members spoke about the unreasonable cost of both renting or purchasing housing, and of the future impact on their children if they’re not able to afford a place to live here.
“A lot of the residents thought this was on the rise. They said they saw more homeless people than they had ever seen before. … They definitely feel this should be taken care of.”
Martin said participants blamed the increasing cost of housing on people arriving from the GTA.
“People are selling their homes in Toronto, moving to Niagara region, getting a bigger home for less money and taking over in that way,” she said.
Long-term care was another priority.
Martin said residents talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic brought problems in that sector to light, how the situations in long-term-care homes are bad and that people are not being treated the way they should.
Infrastructure spending was identified as “definitely an important area for the Region to focus on,” she said.
“They thought it should be a Regional mandate, because the Region can see the big picture and the Region might be able to make it more efficient.”
Martin said survey respondents were split on providing municipal funding support for new hospital development, after the Region was asked to contribute $14 million toward construction of a new West Lincoln Memorial Hospital.
“Some people said yes, definitely it has to be improved. Health care is so important,” she said. “On the other side, some people got almost angry at the thought that the Region was taking on what should be a provincial responsibility.
“They said absolutely not, it is up to the province. It’s not the Region’s job, and the province is going to take credit for it anyway. Let the province do it.”
Although integrated transit has been a priority for Niagara Region, Martin said most focus group participants said they won’t use it. While they agreed transit is important, “when pushed on this, people don’t use transit,” Martin said.
“They see Niagara as a car community. One woman said, ‘When I moved here, I was told we had to get a car. So we did. We bought two.’”
There was also a limited understanding of regional responsibilities — which belong to the Region, and which fall under the mandate of other levels of government — among most focus group participants.
“Their understanding ranged from limited to none at all,” she said.
Although business owners had a better understanding of regional responsibilities, Martin said, they “talked about inefficient spending, added bureaucracy, and they felt that the Region sometimes had multiple priorities that led to a lack of focus.”