| Stacey has braces, freckles and a long blond ponytail, and her blue eyes are accented with heavy black eyeliner and white eyeshadow. She says she’s 19, but looks younger. Stacey is one of the burgeoning number of Calgarians who has ended up homeless and sleeping on mats at the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre. "I had an abusive boyfriend and nowhere else to go," she says. "I hope to get out of here soon. You see the worst of people here." Stacey has had her clothing, all her identification and cigarettes stolen at the shelter, and she says it’s easy to get sick there. She dropped out of high school but hopes to go to art school some day. "I have high hopes and dreams. Just right now it’s really difficult," she says. "People get in a rut. They get depressed."
Brian, who has a red goatee and curly brown hair and looks thoroughly middle class, is standing on rollerblades waiting to get into the Drop-In Centre for supper. He’s just become homeless despite being a high-rise construction worker. After a divorce, he was forced to rent an apartment with deadbeat roommates and was kicked out. He hasn’t been able to afford another place since. "There should be more low-income housing in this city. They’re a little late on the situation," he says. "Not everyone makes $100,000 or more. Some people are living off $40,000, $30,000, $20,000. Everyone lives paycheque to paycheque if you’re in a certain tax bracket.
"It’s tough, man. I feel like a piece of shit. I feel like a burden on society. At 33, I didn’t think I’d be here. Shit happens, and some people move on and some people move deeper into debt."
Pebbles has spiky blond hair with pink highlights, a gold tooth and tattoos. She says she lives outside 365 days of the year. She’s barred from all shelters because she sells drugs. She says she only has a grade 6 education, and the only thing she knows how to do to survive is sell drugs. She says she bathes in the river, and "I shit and piss outside, and I sleep in the snow." She says the police constantly harass her for outdoor camping and for loitering. She used to be a building manager in Vancouver and was married but became a junkie after her husband died. "I smoke rock. I like rock. I’m a rock star," she says, referring to crack cocaine.
If she had a place to live, says Pebbles, "I would better myself. Get on my feet, get married, have kids. Who wants to raise a child outside?" Tears roll down her face as she tells her story. Neither Stacey, Brian nor Pebbles wanted to give their full names.
Calgary’s 2006 homeless count found that there are 3,436 homeless people in the city. Shelters turn people away nightly. Many wonder how has this situation has gotten so far out of hand.
Journalist and researcher Gordon Laird has completed a major new national report on homelessness for Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. Laird says homelessness in Calgary increased by 740 per cent between 1994 and 2006. He found that poverty is now the leading cause of homelessness across Canada, surpassing addictions and mental illness. Canada is estimated to have 150,000 homeless people and Laird estimates that homelessness costs Canadians between $4.5 and $6 billion annually when factoring in health care, criminal justice, social services such as mental health and addictions treatment and emergency shelter costs. Despite Calgary’s booming economy, it has the third largest homeless shelter population in Canada.
Laird places the blame squarely on provincial and federal governments for cutting affordable housing and the social safety net. He points out that between 1993 and 2004 the federal government completely stopped funding affordable housing. "Provincial and federal governments across Canada have, either by design or neglect, created policies that have exacerbated poverty," he says.
Laird also says an increasing number of Canadians are threatened by the prospect of homelessness because between 1.6 to 2.7 million Canadians spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing. "Shelters have become a long-term solution, a sort of default solution, which is not what they were designed to do in the first place. They weren’t designed to be a long-term holding place for people. That’s what we did in Victorian times."
Laird calls for a national strategy that includes an investment of $2 billion annually on affordable housing, rent supplements and poverty mitigation programs and continued funding to frontline shelters and services. He advocates the "housing first" model that’s been used in the U.S. to reduce homelessness. With this approach, homeless people are immediately placed into housing and given the support services they need to stay there.
Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S.-based Interagency Council of Homelessness, which is responsible for creating the federal homeless strategy, has been in Calgary several times over the last year to meet with politicians and business leaders. Mangano says that in the U.S. 10-year plans move from "serving" and "managing" homelessness to solving it.
"When I ask homeless people what they want, they never ask for a pill, a program or a protocol ever. They ask for one thing – a place to live. Isn’t it about time that the expectations of government and providers matched the aspirations of homeless people?"
Mangano says 25 cities in the U.S. have already experienced reductions in homelessness under 10-year plans. He adds cities that reduce homelessness have also saved money.
"We’ve learned for the population of chronic homeless people that it’s more expensive to have them randomly ricocheting through the systems than it is to provide them a simple place to live and the services they need to sustain their tenancies," he says.
The Calgary Committee to End Homelessness, which was formed this January and is comprised of private sector, non-profit and government representatives, is eyeing the housing first model. The committee is working on a 10-year plan, which will likely incorporate some of the tactics U.S. cities have used.
When asked how the housing first model would work in a city with a 0.5 per cent rental vacancy rate, Tim Richter, project manager for the committee, says, "I suspect there is room within the existing housing infrastructure in our city to put more people into housing." However, he says adding new affordable housing is also "inevitable."
The committee wants to see secondary suites allowed throughout the city. It is also examining rent supplements, incentives to promote the construction of affordable housing and whether current government policies create barriers. The committee is also looking at how to enable home ownership for more Calgarians. Richter is very confident homelessness can be eliminated in a decade. "I wouldn’t have quit my private-sector job and leaped into this if I didn’t think it was possible," he says.
Dermot Baldwin, executive director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre, says he’d be happy to shut his doors if there was no longer a need but he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon. He’s angry because he feels that people are now starting to attack and blame shelters for the current situation, though various levels of government completely "abdicated responsibility."
"Everybody who had a brain, with any experience, looked at (the homeless situation) and said this is a disaster waiting to happen. Watch this fall apart. And, sure enough, now they’re blaming the agencies that said we won’t let you freeze in the dark – we will extend help," he says.
Baldwin thinks housing first is a "great philosophy" but questions how it could work with such a low vacancy rate. He says it would also only be successful if there is enough social support in place for mentally ill and addicted people, which would require substantial funding. He is concerned that if Calgary embraces the U.S. housing-first model there will be increased pressure to close shelters before people have anywhere else to go.
Baldwin points to a recent case of a mentally ill homeless man who was sent to the hospital because he was suicidal. After waiting for four and a half hours to be seen, the man killed himself by stepping in front of an LRT train. Baldwin says until the necessary support services are in place, shelters such as his need to exist. |
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