HOUSING AGAIN • BulletinNumber 90 April 1, 2006 The Housing Again
Bulletin, sponsored by Raising the Roof A monthly electronic
bulletin highlighting what people are doing to Our web sites are: Housing
Again Shared Learnings on
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Feature: Coalition Requests
Immediate Action to Implement $1.6-Billion
Community Profile: Celebrating Outstanding Work with Homeless
Youth
News Briefs: Ontario Budget 2006;
Study Finds BC’s Welfare Rules Contributing to
Homelessness ----------------------------------------------- Coalition Requests Immediate Action
to Implement $1.6-Billion The National Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, of which Raising the Roof and many others are signatories, has sent a letter to Federal Minister of Human Resources and Social Development also responsible for housing (CMHC) Diane Finley and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to request immediate action to implement the $1.6 billion affordable housing fund authorized by Parliament in June of 2005. “The latest rental market report from CMHC confirms that Canada continues to face a nation-wide affordable housing crisis,” read the letter, which was signed by Raising the Roof President Sean Goetz-Gadon. “The desperate conditions facing hundreds of thousands of Canadian households underline the urgency in allocating the funding approved by Parliament. Business and community organizations are in agreement that investment in affordable housing is good for people, good for communities and good for the economy.” The NCHH believes that Aboriginal funding should be set aside for Aboriginal housing providers, on and off-reserve. The best available mechanism for allocating the remainder of the funding is the existing bilateral housing agreements signed by the federal government and every province and territory under the terms of the Affordable Housing Framework Agreement of November 2001. The coalition is recommending that funding be allocated to the provinces and territories on a per capita basis, and that the provinces and territories use the funding to create long-term solutions to reduce homelessness, lower the number of households in core housing need, and address other affordable housing issues. The accountability framework and communications protocol in the existing framework can be used to ensure proper accountability for the federal housing dollars. “We believe that this approach will be strongly supported by the provinces.” “At the local level, municipal governments, community partners and business organizations are ready to participate in the social and affordable housing solutions, but they need the Parliamentary housing funding to start flowing.” The letter ends with an offer from representatives of the NCHH to meet with the Ministers to discuss in detail the proposals for implementing the affordable housing funding approved by Parliament. www.raisingtheroof.org Other signatories to the letter include: Joyce Potter (Canadian Housing Renewal Association), Cathy Crowe (Toronto Disaster Relief Committee), Deborah Schlichter (Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association), David Seymour (National Aboriginal Housing Association), Carol Hunter (Canadian Co-operative Association), René Daoust (Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada), Michael Shapcott (National Housing and Homelessness Network), Paulette Halupa (National Anti Poverty Organization), Maylanne Maybee (The Anglican Church of Canada), Jim Marshall (The United Church of Canada), and Laurel Rothman (Campaign 2000) and Fransois Saillant (FRAPRU). -------------------------------------------------
NEWS
BRIEFS:
Ontario Budget 2006
The Ontario Budget 2006 is “long on rhetoric and short on concrete promises to help the poor” says the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. Although the budget contained no new funding for social housing, there was a provision to create the Ontario Mortgage and Housing Initiative to assist developers of affordable housing with low-cost, long-term financing for new rental and supportive housing units. www.ontariobudget.ca Study Finds BC’s Welfare Rules
Contributing to Homelessness A major study released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that BC’s welfare system is systematically discouraging, delaying and denying assistance to many of the people most in need of help, with harmful consequences for some of the province’s most vulnerable residents, including homelessness. “Denied Assistance: Closing the Front Door on Welfare in BC” examines why the number of people receiving welfare has plummeted in the wake of changes to eligibility rules and the application system, and looks at what is happening to people who seek and are denied welfare. It is the first in-depth assessment of the new application system, drawing on data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and extensive interviews with people who have applied for welfare, front-line community advocates and ministry workers. Bruce Wallace, researcher with the Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group, which undertook the study with CCPA, said the research found that many people are being diverted to homelessness, and other forms of hardship. www.policyalternatives.ca --------------------------------------------------- The Housing
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