[homeles_ot-l] FW: [cathycrowenews] Early Summer 2007 Newsletter
Lynne Browne
lbrowne at ysb.on.ca
Mon Jun 18 16:42:06 EDT 2007
FYI from Cathy Crowe
1. Philip Mangano (aka Bush’s ‘Homelessness Czar’) – ‘On tour’ in Canada
2. ‘Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out’ – Book tour update
(including Ottawa’s event)
3. ‘All Our Sisters’ – A new book on homelessness by Susan Scott
Lynne Browne
Coordinator, Alliance to End Homelessness
147 Besserer Street, Ottawa ON K1N 6A7
613-241-7913 x 205, lbrowne at ysb.on.ca
www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca
_____
From: Crowe News [mailto:crowenews at tdrc.net]
Sent: June 18, 2007 3:45 PM
To: cathycrowenews at povnet.org
Subject: [cathycrowenews] Early Summer 2007 Newsletter
Newsletter # 35 ~ Early Summer 2007
Dear Subscribers,
Below is the thirty fifth edition of Cathy Crowe's monthly newsletter. This
is a great resource for individuals who care about homelessness and housing,
health and other social issues.
You can also view Cathy's newsletters at her website at: HYPERLINK
"http://tdrc.net/index.php?page=newsletter"
\nhttp://tdrc.net/index.php?page=newsletter.
Further information about subscribing to the newsletter is found below. I
want to hear from you - about the newsletter, about things that are
happening in the homelessness sector (what a sad term!), and about good
things which will provide inspiration for all of us.
*************************************************************
1. Philip Mangano (aka Bush’s ‘Homelessness Czar’) – ‘On tour’ in Canada
2. ‘Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out’ – Book tour update
3. ‘All Our Sisters’ – A new book on homelessness by Susan Scott
1. Philip Mangano (aka Bush’s ‘Homelessness Czar’) – ‘On tour’ in Canada.
Philip Mangano, appointed by President George Bush in 2002 as the Executive
Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, is not
content to contain his work to the United States’ problems of epidemic
levels of homelessness; instead he is spending an unusual amount of time in
Canada promoting the American method of dealing with the ‘chronic homeless’.
Mr. Mangano has recently been in Vancouver, Calgary (three times since
winter), Red Deer, Toronto, Ottawa (he’s returning in August) and Montreal,
preaching the notion of a ‘Ten Year’ plan to end homelessness with the
seemingly positive message of ‘housing first.’ The underlying principles of
‘housing first’ however are insuring a reduction in reliance and dependence
on shelters and emergency services, targeting the ‘chronics’, and creating a
business plan with measurable and cost-effective outcomes.
In response to my February 2007 Newsletter entitled HYPERLINK
"http://tdrc.net/resources/public/Crowe-Newsletter_feb_07.htm"“Dismantling
Downtown”, Mr. Mangano sent me an email where he modestly noted, “Your
recent reference to my potential impact in Toronto, I fear, is a bit
exaggerated. While I have spoken there and met briefly with the Mayor, as
of this date I am unaware of any jurisdictionally led, community based ten
year planning effort there”. He went on to say, “I am sorry that apparently
your city, like Los Angeles, has not yet adopted a Ten Year Plan or engaged
in Project Homeless Connect which are the innovative initiatives that we
have disseminated across our country”.
Mr. Mangano shouldn’t be so modest. He recently spoke to 2,000 people in
attendance at the Big City Mayors Caucus (BCMC) of the Federation of
Canadian Municipalities. BCMC member cities include Vancouver, Surrey,
Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Brampton, Hamilton,
Kitchener, London, Mississauga, Ottawa, Windsor, Toronto, Gatineau,
Montréal, Laval, Québec, Longueuil, Halifax, and St. John's. The City of
Toronto has just announced it is developing a 10-year Affordable Housing
Action Framework: 2008 – 2018.
Michael Shapcott and I had a chance to hear Mr. Mangano in Calgary earlier
in May. He really is a remarkable speaker, you could almost say
evangelical, preaching the issues of health, economics and the social evils
of homelessness. The trouble is that the American approach is obviously not
working. It’s a game of smoke and mirrors. So why on earth are our
municipal and national leaders looking to the United States for solutions on
homelessness?
As Michael Shapcott explains:
“So, what’s wrong with this picture? While Mangano has been piling up
frequent flier points visiting every part of the U.S. to convince state and
local governments that they need to take up the responsibility for a
“housing first” policy for the homeless, his political boss - President Bush
- has been gutting the U.S. federal government’s funding for housing. This
year alone, there are massive cuts to seniors’ supportive housing and
disabled housing funding. The U.S. federal housing program for people with
AIDS will help about 67,000 people this year - yet an estimated 500,000
people living with HIV / AIDS desperately need housing help.
The problem is so bad that even the rather staid Joint Centre for Housing
Studies at Harvard University has proclaimed in its latest annual State of
the Nation’s Housing that affordable housing and homelessness have reached
their worst levels ever, and funding cuts by the federal government are the
chief culprit.”
While Canadian cities are looking at the Bush administration’s approach to
homelessness, the fact that the Bush administration is cutting funding to
housing seems lost on Mangano’s Canadian hosts. American homeless advocacy
organizations in the U.S. such as the National Coalition for the Homeless
report this decade as being worse than the Great Depression for homeless
people. In addition, the United States is increasingly relying on what has
been coined ‘Weapons of Mass Displacement’ – policies and funding decisions
that limit necessary life-saving supports and spaces for people who are
homeless. For example ‘no-feeding laws’ in some American parks, increased
policing and ticketing measures in downtown cores, street sweeps, removing
public benches, closing public parks at night, using public works trucks to
hose sleeping people down, fingerprinting homeless people who use certain
shelters, all practices that create further hardships and worsen
displacement.
As my friend, and documentary filmmaker Laura Sky notes,
“Mangano is charismatic and compelling in naming our own collective wish - a
home for every resident. At the same time, his solutions are part and
parcel of the conservative federal, provincial and municipal policies that
brought us the problems we're experiencing right now. The mantra of those
policies is: cut services, they're inefficient; cut supports, they're too
expensive; eliminate shelters, they're a blight on our cities. We need
housing instead, the argument goes - at the expense of support for those who
will be swept into that housing. All this without addressing the economic
and social conditions which create the need for shelters.”
In Canada it’s the same thing. We are witnessing an almost fetishized
emphasis on research, including street counts and investigations into
panhandlers’ needs, new by-laws against panhandling and by-laws restricting
where homeless people can sleep, reduction of funding to programs that do
outreach to people who are homeless, and a withdrawal of funding for
emergency day and night shelters. Toronto alone has lost over 300 shelter
beds just this past winter and it continues to rely on its Streets to Homes
program as an answer to visible street homelessness. There are many reports
that people who are housed through this program suffer greatly from hunger
and isolation and remain at great risk of becoming or do become homeless
again.
The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee recently held a press conference to
release new findings on Toronto’s Streets to Homes program including the
findings of their investigative trip to New York City which was hosted by
the National Coalition for the Homeless. Excerpts from the press conference
can be HYPERLINK "http://storywordspics.blogspot.com/"downloaded here
courtesy of John Bonnar.
Journalist Linda McQuaig, in a recent Toronto Star article titled HYPERLINK
"http://www.thestar.com/article/220172"‘Wrong way to end homelessness’,
compared the Bush-Mangano model of weaning people who are homeless off
temporary shelter and food supports and moving them into housing to
Toronto’s Streets to Homes program which emphasizes focusing energies on the
visible street homeless without the supports to make the housing work.
For more on Mangano and the U.S. housing scene, check out the Wellesley
Institute backgrounder posted in the housing and homelessness section at
HYPERLINK "http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com"www.wellesleyinstitute.com
2. ‘Dying for a Home: Homeless Activists Speak Out’ – Book Tour update.
In May I took ‘Dying for a Home’ on a seven city Canadian tour. While it is
still fresh in my mind, I wanted to share with you a few of my impressions.
First stop: Regina. I was in Regina to speak at the HYPERLINK
"http://www.una.ab.ca/conferences/F000140DF/S006C50A0" \nS.O.S. Medicare
Conference, where over 600 people from across the country had come together
to determine how to keep Tommy Douglas’ dream alive and move to the next
natural stage of Medicare. Should it be Pharmacare? Homecare? Housing?
While in Regina, a Toronto newspaper called me to ask what I thought of a
new mobile outreach team in Toronto that would include a doctor. At the end
of our conversation I said “Well thanks, I’m at the S.O.S. Medicare
conference and I think you’ve just made me realize that we do indeed have a
two-tiered health care system in Canada.”
This may sound obvious, but for me it was a ‘nursing epiphany’ moment. I
realized that as long as we have the need for mobile outreach programs, and
nurses with knapsacks filled with duct tape, socks, underwear and other
health supplies, who provide necessary health care to people in ravines,
store doorways, parks, church basements and emergency day and night shelters
– then we in fact already have a two-tier health care system, one for the
housed and one for the displaced, and we really should be doing something
about it.
When I spoke at the podium I was conscious that I stood in front of a large
promotional conference sign, which displayed the logos of the conference
funders. I was also conscious of how few of those sponsors lent any support
or funding to homeless/housing advocacy groups like the Toronto Disaster
Relief Committee. My panel remarks were titled HYPERLINK
"http://tdrc.net/resources/public/Crowe_Speech_may_4_07.htm"‘S.O.S. In
Canada! People are Dying for a Home,’ and it’s on my web page
Second stop: Vancouver: My book was launched in downtown eastside Vancouver
at Gallery Gachet. Vancouver is undergoing a major transition. I was
fortunate to be given an insightful walking tour of the downtown eastside by
Jean Swanson, a well known anti-poverty activist and author of Poor-Bashing
(Between the Lines, 2001). It is evident everywhere that the Olympics are
coming to Vancouver. There is a massive construction boom, housing and
rental costs are exploding, and the early signs of condos in the downtown
eastside and boarded up hotels suggest the gentrification to come. On
Hastings Street, and in the nearby agencies, the poverty, fatigue, hunger
and the despair was painfully apparent.
Third stop: Calgary. Like Vancouver, Calgary is booming and I mean booming.
There is a shortage of workers and a shortage of housing. 100 people move
to Calgary for work and settle each day. Tim Horton’s pays its workers over
$15/hour. A 1 bedroom apartment rents for $1550 to $2500 a month. It takes
2 people earning $15 an hour just to be able to afford a 1 bedroom
apartment. Calgary desperately needs 15,000 new affordable housing units
right now.
In Calgary, my book was launched at the Canadian Housing and Renewal
Conference and at the University of Calgary. I covered a lot of ground in
Calgary. I was joined by filmmaker Laura Sky for research on our film about
homeless families and children. In three days, we visited and met with
people at 10 different agencies that work in the area of homelessness.
Two visits stood out. First, I toured the Calgary Drop-In Centre which
provides emergency shelter for over 1100 men and women each night. I was
provided with graphic reminders of what the scene looked like when shelter
users and staff were sick and quarantined on site during a Norwalk virus
several years ago.
Second was a visit to Inn from the Cold. An estimated 170 families with
children are forced to move nightly from church basement to church basement
in the faith based and volunteer driven Inn from the Cold program. It is
the only place I know of in Canada where families and children must endure
such conditions.
Let me describe to you what this means.
Every day, in the late afternoon, families enter the reception/greeting area
at the Inn from the Cold office. Once registered, they wait. They wait to
see if there will be space for them in one of the churches that will open
its basement for that night. Over 70 churches take part in this expansive
program that has been in existence for many years. Buses then transport the
families to the church site. They are provided with dinner and cots.
Bedtime is fairly early because morning comes very early. Waking time is
often 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning. In many cases, one parent goes to work
and children of school age are bused to school. The entire process repeats
itself the next day and the next and the next, each night to a different
church.
Meanwhile, there is no designated emergency family shelter in Calgary.
Fourth stop: Ottawa. At the invitation of the Alliance to End Homelessness
and the Canadian Nurses Association I launched my book at a press conference
where long time Ottawa Street Nurse Judy Taylor also spoke. In Ottawa I saw
a sophisticated network of people and organizations that make up the
HYPERLINK "http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca"Alliance to End Homelessness,
led by the creative and determined Lynne Brown. Some of the most innovative
and necessary programs for people who are homeless have been nurtured in
this community – a managed alcohol program or ‘wet’ shelter, a hospice in a
shelter, partnerships between the university and community, in large part
due to the work of nurses like Judy Taylor and Wendy Muckle. In May, when
their municipal politicians decided to try to use the recent federal housing
monies to bolster the City’s general revenue, this group fought back
successfully and they got the money reallocated back for housing!
Fifth stop: Kingston. I was invited to my hometown of Kingston by the
Mayor’s Task Force on Poverty. I used the opportunity to tour local
agencies and see and hear first hand from local activists and poor people
about their issues. Compared to other communities I have visited, Kingston
is really struggling as a community with the issues around poverty,
homelessness, hunger and discrimination. Despite longstanding poverty in
Kingston and significant housing needs, the City has not been overly
attentive to the issues, with the exception of a number of diehard
individuals and groups such as the Sisters of Providence who continue to
this day to call for justice in the issues of poverty, hunger and
homelessness. The huge turnout to my talk and book signing event and the
media interest that continued for weeks after my visit, suggests a real
opportunity for activists, low-income people and other community voices of
interest to unite and send a message to the Mayor’s Task Force. In my
speech I cautioned Kingstonians on a number of trends I see occurring across
the country, and I urged them to keep those concerns in mind as they moved
forward. (HYPERLINK
"http://tdrc.net/index.php?page=the-kingston-i-knew"click here for speech)
Sixth stop: Ridgetown/Chatham. I made this visit to southwest Ontario at
the invitation of the London Conference of the United Church. This stopover
allowed me to contemplate the challenges of homelessness and housing needs
in small town and rural Ontario - communities that might not have a shelter,
social housing units, let alone jobs. The United Church has HYPERLINK
"http://www.united-church.ca/economic/housing/resolution"taken a strong
stand on housing and works with the National Coalition on Housing and
Homelessness.
Seventh stop: Sault Ste. Marie. My first visit to the Sault was thanks to
the invitation of the Algoma Health Unit, Community Quality Improvement and
Community Supporting Citizens. I was struck by how cohesive a small
community can be. Northern Ontario has been severely affected by
restrictions on the use of housing monies. Unable to use the monies for new
construction, Sault Ste. Marie now faces a 1% vacancy rate in housing,
making it a high risk community for anyone facing job loss, personal crisis
or eviction. This community is added to my growing list of communities that
does not have a designated family shelter or a designated homeless women’s
shelter.
3. ‘All Our Sisters’ - A new book on homelessness by Susan Scott
I am so happy to have recently met Susan Scott, a Calgary writer and
freelance journalist who accomplished something quite beautiful and
powerful. She has given voice to approximately 70 homeless women from
across the country in her new book HYPERLINK
"http://www.broadviewpress.com/bvbooks.asp?BookID=858" \n‘All Our Sisters:
Stories of Homeless Women in Canada’ (Broadview Press, 2007). I urge you to
pick it up. We both hope that you will use our books to fuel your passion,
your rage and your commitment for change.
Cathy
Thanks to Dave Meslin for research and layout and Bob Crocker for editing.
HYPERLINK "mid://00000120/#Back to Top"Back to Top ^
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