[homeles_ot-l] FW: [hhno-on] WI backgrounder: Five questions for Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan

Tue Mar 25 11:22:56 EDT 2008

FYI

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: Michael Shapcott [mailto:Michael at wellesleyinstitute.com] 
Sent: March 25, 2008 11:04 AM
To: nhhn-can at povnet.org
Cc: hhno-on at povnet.org
Subject: [hhno-on] WI backgrounder: Five questions for Ontario Finance
Minister Dwight Duncan

As Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan rises in the Ontario Legislature
today (Tuesday, March 25, 2008) to deliver the 2008/09 provincial Budget,
here are five key questions from the Wellesley Institute on housing and
homelessness issues:

ONE: Will Minister Duncan commit the funds to close Ontario’s billion-dollar
housing deficit? In 2001, the Ontario government signed the Affordable
Housing Framework Agreement with the federal government and all the other
provinces and territories. Under this deal, Ontario agreed to increase
provincial housing spending by $352 million, but actual provincial housing
spending has actually dropped by $731 million, according to Statistics
Canada. This has created a billion-dollar housing deficit. The huge gap
between the promise of increased funding and the reality of funding cuts is
one major reason why the province has failed to deliver the 20,000 new
affordable homes that were supposed to delivered under the 2001 agreement.
As of February of 2008, the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and
Housing says that it has developed 7,234 new affordable homes. It says
another 3,719 are under development. Ontario hasn't released any details so
we don't know the rents / ownership costs of these new homes and cannot
assess whether they are truly affordable to low and moderate-income
households. The Wellesley Institute’s National Housing Report Card of
February, 2008, notes that Ontario has the worst housing spending record of
any province or territory.

TWO: Will Minister Duncan ensure that the $150 million or more in unspent
federal housing funds are allocated before the funding expires this fiscal
year? Parliament authorized $1.6 billion in affordable housing funding in
2005, and the federal government in 2006 assigned $312.3 million to Ontario
for an affordable housing trust fund, and an addition $80.2 million for an
off-reserve Aboriginal affordable housing trust fund. The 2007 Ontario
budget announced plans for this spending, but as much as half, or more, of
the dollars remain uncommitted. The single biggest spending envelope for the
affordable housing trust fund was a housing allowance program that was
supposed to benefit 27,000 households and cost $185 million. It is estimated
that only half the funding has been committed. Not one penny of the
Aboriginal funding has been committed, and it is estimated that as much as
$80 million of the other fund remains unspent. If the money is not committed
by the end of fiscal 2008, then it will revert back to the federal
government.

THREE: Will Minister Duncan complete the uploading of the cost of social
housing programs back to the provincial level? In the 2007 budget, the
Ontario government uploaded housing and other costs from the 905
municipalities to the provincial level, but left Toronto and the rest of the
province to continue paying the costs for programs that properly belongs at
the provincial level. In recent days, the provincial government has
announced a $100 million capital repair fund for social housing and a $500
million loan program. There are reports that as much as $300 million in
additional repair funding may be announced in the Budget or soon after. All
this is an important down payment on the billion-dollar-plus province-wide
capital repair bill for former public housing projects, but it is only one
part of the huge financial burden that the province downloaded on
municipalities starting in 1998. Municipalities may be well-placed to take
on the administration of housing programs, but they cannot the financial
costs - which properly belong at the provincial level.

FOUR: Will Minister Duncan ensure that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and
Housing, and other provincial ministries, have the capacity to fund and
deliver critical housing and homelessness programs? The 2007 Ontario Budget
reported spending cuts for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in
2006 and again in 2007. Some experts have suggested that the difficulties in
delivering housing programs at the provincial level (including the housing
allowance, Aboriginal trust fund, affordable housing and other initiatives)
is related to the limited capacity within the Ministry to develop and
effectively administer programs. The Ministry was gutted in the 1990s to
suit the political interests of the government of the day. Housing programs
were fractured as they were downloaded to municipal service managers.
Supportive housing - which provides a home with special physical and / or
mental health supports - was transferred to the Ministry of Health.
Recently, supportive housing programs have been downloaded by the Ministry
to the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs). LHINs, like municipal
housing service managers, may be effective administrators at the local
level, but they need the funding and program support from the province.

FIVE: Will Minister Duncan use the 2008 Ontario Budget to make a major
down-payment on a comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy, as promised in
the government’s last Speech from the Throne? Housing insecurity and
homelessness are critical health issues, leading to increased illness and
premature death. The links between poverty and poor health are recognized by
the World Health Organization at the international level, and confirmed by
countless research reports, including research funded by the Wellesley
Institute. Some politicians, including federal Finance Minister Jim
Flaherty, have called on Ontario to make additional corporate tax cuts in
the hope that the benefits of these cuts will somehow trickle down to
benefit those who are suffering from poverty, poor housing and poor health.
But corporate tax cuts don’t create the social investments in housing,
health, education and other fundamental determinants of health. While it
make take the Ontario government a number of months to fully develop its
Poverty Reduction Strategy, the 2008 Ontario Budget is an excellent place to
start with a significant down-payment in the form of increased investments
in housing and other fundamental determinants of health.

- Michael 

* * *

Michael Shapcott, Director of Community Engagement

The Wellesley Institute, 45 Charles Street East - #101

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4Y 1S2

Telephone - 416-972-1010, x231

Mobile - 416-605-8316

Facsimile - 416-21-7228

HYPERLINK "http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com"www.wellesleyinstitute.com

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