Despite more than doubling its capacity in 2024, Cornerstone Housing for Women’s emergency shelter is forced to turn away more than 100 women seeking help every month. And the number of newcomers to Canada who have come to the shelter has increased by 340 per cent in a year.
These numbers, taken from the report to diocesan Synod of the Rev. Canon Dr. Peter John Hobbs, director general of Anglican Community Ministries, are consequences of the chronic shortage of affordable housing.
The Cornerstone shelter, expanded last year from 60 to 165 beds, is constantly full because there is no supportive housing available.
“Many of the people we are seeing are capable of living independently on their own,” Shannon Miller, director of Cornerstone’s emergency shelter operations, says. Some will need supports. The wait to get into housing is “ridiculously long,” she says, so women stay in the shelter or perhaps rely on the mercy of family or friends, neither of which are necessarily good options, particularly when there are health issues.
It’s difficult to get well in a shelter, she says. People need security in their own space where they are in control.
Sarah Button, executive director of the Centretown Ottawa Citizens Coalition (CCOC), owner-operator of 1,700 affordable units in the city, shares a similar experience. “People are staying put,” she says. “That’s a lack of choice.” More than half of CCOC’s units are highly subsidized.
In a “normal” (pre-pandemic) year turnover in CCOC units would be about 200 units while in 2024 it was less than 100. Residents in arrears were higher last year than at any time in CCOC’s 50 years.
Multifaith Housing Initiative (MHI), the non-profit operator of 422 units, has also experienced the reduced turnover rate and the increase in arrears. Typically, some of MHI’s tenants have come from shelters.
Executive director Suzanne Le says the situation has been compounded by a backlog at the Ontario Landlord Tenant Board. When all else fails, a case of arrears goes to the board for an ordered payment plan. The pre-pandemic time to get a hearing was about three months, meaning an accumulated rent backlog could be manageable. Today, the typical wait is about nine months by which time it’s impossible develop a manageable recovery plan, and the tenant is out in the cold. Some turn to shelters and Belong Ottawa and other support services.
Some turn to the healthcare system or even commit petty crime to access the penal system. “The cost to handling homelessness by that method is immense,” Le says.
When people can’t afford to pay their rent, their food is the first casualty. They turn to the food banks for relief. “We know that the lack of affordable housing is directly linked to food bank use,” says Rachel Wilson, executive director of the Ottawa Food Bank.
The food bank supports 112 emergency food programs across the city, including Belong Ottawa and the FAMSAC Food Cupboard in Hollyer House at Christ Church Bells Corners.
Belong Ottawa’s food consumption has gone up by 30 per cent in one year at the agency’s three locations. Food comes from the Ottawa Food Bank, in-kind donations from stores and some is purchased at market prices.
Breakfast and lunch are served daily at St. Luke’s Table and Centre 454, and three meals a day at The Well.
Executive director Shauna-Marie Young says that while users aren’t asked about their shelter situations there is anecdotal evidence that Belong serves the homeless, those precariously housed in shelters, and increasingly, people who are housed.In total, Belong Ottawa helped about 500 people daily in 2024.
Ottawa Food Bank users are paying market rents that they can’t afford. Thirty-seven per cent of the customers are children who are part of a family that is feeling the pinch, this in spite of the federal government’s Canada Child Benefit, and in spite of the current two-month exemption of GST on a range of consumer goods that ends on February 15.
The Ontario Senator Kim Pate told the Senate Finance Committee in November that the cost of the GST holiday far exceeds predictions of the total cost of a guaranteed liveable income for those in poverty.
Whatever the merits may be of a guaranteed income – an idea that has been floated for decades – it is the kind of holistic approach that all providers of subsidized housing and food support agree is needed.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation considers a household that must spend 30 per cent or more of household income on housing to be in core housing need. One in five of all households in the City of Ottawa fall into that category.
The food bank’s Rachel Wilson says the greatest challenge for food banks is that there is no order of government dedicated to food insecurity and poverty. “We have to lobby separately,” she says. “There is no agency that is responsible for, or responsive to, the issues we’re facing. That makes it very challenging for our sector to get anything done.”
Less than two per cent of the food bank’s funding comes from government. “We’re deeply reliant on the community and we’re just not able to keep up.”
Shannon Miller of the Cornerstone shelter used the same words as she described the lack of movement out of the shelter because of the lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of food. The number of staff has almost doubled since the pandemic, but that too increases costs.
“We can’t have a conversation about housing affordability without also talking about incomes,” CCOC’s Sarah Button says. House prices and rents have outpaced income growth by several times.
Both CCOC and MHI are members of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association and support advocacy for tax and funding measures to expand the supply of affordable housing, including the establishment of a standing roundtable of representatives from governments and stakeholders to formulate co-ordinated measures.
Similarly, the current proposal of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA) calls for a “Team Canada” strategy bringing together all levels of government, the community housing sector and private organizations.
The key problem writ large is the inadequate supply of affordable housing: only four per cent of Canada’s housing stock meets affordability criteria compared with eight to 10 per cent for peer countries.
There is no solution in sight for this complex housing and social crisis. As the operator of Belong Ottawa’s food and social support services, Cornerstone’s shelter and supportive housing and a partner in development of affordable housing, the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa is a leader in taking incremental steps in the right direction.
Having completed 157 units in partnership with parishes and community groups in recent years, about 125 more units are in development over the next two years. Many parishes are members and supporters of Multifaith Housing Initiative, which will own 133 units of affordable housing in the Dream LeBreton project currently in construction. Thirty of those units, supported by a donation from the diocese, are designated for Indigenous people. The Anchor Project in development with Julian of Norwich parish will add about 75 more units. CCOC has broken ground on 20 units and hopes to begin construction of 70 more in 2025. Such are steps of incrementalism, replicated around the country, the best available hope for more housing justice.
Seasons and cycles