[homeles_ot-l] Municipal election housing story

Tue Oct 12 10:22:58 EDT 2010

ATEH and partners in the news today: 

Beaver Barracks shines as social housing star

Watson, Doucet take on housing as election issue

By Chris Cobb and Louisa Taylor, The Ottawa Citizen October 12, 2010 

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Ray Sullivan of Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corp., left, stands with
Marion Wright, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, outside
the Beaver Barracks affordable housing complex in downtown Ottawa.
Sullivan says people who work downtown are finding it harder and harder
to find housing they can afford.

Photograph by: Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Citizen

Beaver Barracks looks like an upscale condo development. 

All glass and brick and modern lines, its townhouses, apartment units
and organic gardens will eventually fill almost an entire downtown block
between the Museum of Nature and the Queensway. 

When the first Barracks units are finished at the end of the year, they
won't be for sale, they'll be for rent. With the municipal election
approaching, the Barracks stand as a symbol of how complex it is for the
city to provide new units for the thousands of needy families waiting
for public housing. 

It's a major social problem that has led activists to launch an
unprecedented, co-ordinated effort aimed at pressuring candidates to
commit to improvements in housing and three other major social service
areas: Public transit, recreation and child care. 

Simone Thibault, executive director of the Centretown Community Health
Centre and co-chair of the nine-member Coalition To Move Ottawa Forward,
says the recession has increased need. 

"This is a challenging time," she said. "With recession comes stresses
but we get little extra funding to respond to the increased demand.
Everyone is trying to do more with less and we feel strongly that in
this municipal election we should raise issues that we are seeing on the
street." 

Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corp., which is building the Beaver Barracks
complex, is a private, non-profit organization that plans to rent 40 per
cent of the units at market rate and designate the remainder
below-market or rent-geared-to-income. 

"Over the past 20 years, little rental housing has been built in the
city and existing stock is being diminished by conversions to luxury
condos, said corporation executive director Ray Sullivan. "The result is
that people who work downtown are finding it harder and harder to find
housing they can afford. 

"Most of our tenants are working people with good jobs," Sullivan says.
"They're teachers just starting out, or the manager at Starbucks, and
they can't find affordable rentals in the private market." 

Whether downtown or in the suburbs, two out of five renters are spending
more than half their incomes on housing -- "a major problem we need to
bring out in the open." 

To jump-start the political debate, the Alliance to End Homelessness, a
coalition of 70 community agencies, asked municipal candidates for their
positions on affordable housing, and is planning to release the results
of the survey later this month. 

Whether it's the rare building of new units or repairing existing ones,
affordable housing is the big ticket item on Ottawa's social-service
spending list. 

This year, Ottawa is spending $142.5 million on housing -- $88 million
directly from city coffers and the rest in federal money. 

That money is spent on rent supplements ($104 million); housing the
homeless in hostels ($24 million) and general support for the homeless
($14.5 million). 

Because no new low-cost rental housing has been built for years, the
waiting list of 10,000 families has stayed more or less static. If a
family gets placed it's only because another family has moved out. 

According to the Alliance to End Homelessness, the city is doing a lousy
job of housing people in need and the statistics do little to disprove
that. 

During 2009, 7,445 people stayed in shelters and that doesn't include
those who sleep on the street or "couch surf." 

The Ottawa shelter system cost $18 million last year, of which the city
paid 20 per cent, or $3 million from its public housing budget. 

Two mayoral candidates -- Clive Doucet and Jim Watson -- have stated
clearly that they see housing as the single most important social issue.

Watson said he will propose to spend $14 million a year on homelessness
and social housing with the money coming from two principal sources:
Funds that will be freed up from the province uploading $23 million of
social services charges, and from the capital budget. 

Watson says it makes "good economic sense." 

"But I think for most people, the bigger issue here is our moral
responsibility to help those who really need it," he said. 

In an interview with the Citizen, Doucet said stable housing is pivotal
in keeping Ottawa healthy. 

"You can have a kid vaccinated properly and a kid who breaks his leg or
cuts himself," he said. "And he is treated very well by the health care
system, but if he goes back into that homeless environment you're not
addressing the bigger issue." 

Doucet says he will push for a massive reorganization of the way Ottawa
delivers its social services. 

"The health of a city is dependent on a lot of things," he said, "and we
need to ask how it all fits together. Recreation and public transit are
other key elements. The health of a city is dependent on more than
whether you can get good trauma treatment." 

Doucet, who said he will detail his plan on Tuesday, also wants to see
the city buy more land for recreation use. 

"Five major developers and the NCC own most of the land," he said. "They
run the city. If you have the land you can do almost anything." 

Mayor Larry O'Brien, who has characterized the Watson plan as "a
socialist housing scheme" has no stated housing policy of his own. 

"We've made a serious commitment to improving affordable housing
conditions in Ottawa over the past four years," said the O'Brien camp in
a statement. 

"The problem is not solved, and won't be solved, by throwing a few
million dollars at it or by expanding social housing units when we can't
take care of what we already have." 

According to the last (2006) census data, more than 10 per cent of the
labour force in Ottawa was living in poverty. With the subsequent
recession, the number is now certainly higher. 

According to the most recent "Vital Signs" report by the Community
Foundation of Ottawa, food distribution by the Ottawa Food Bank is at an
all-time high. 

>From March 2008 through March last year, 43,800 people a month sought
help from the Food Bank. 

The Coalition to Move Ottawa Forward chose recreation, child care,
housing and transit because they all fall under the city mandate. 

The pragmatic aim is to get candidates to commit to improving those
areas and get those political allies elected. 

"We want the city to show leadership to make sure that families don't
fall through the cracks -- that nobody gets left behind," said Thibault.

"The housing issue is clear," she added. "There's lots of work that
needs to be done both with new housing and fixing the current stock.
With recreation, we need to make sure our kids are engaged during the
critical hours of 3 to 8 p.m. We need a coordinated approach in every
neighbourhood." 

- - - 

Uncover much more election coverage at ottawacitizen.com/election2010

(c) Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: 
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Beaver+Barracks+shines+social+housing+
star/3655619/story.html#ixzz129QtWuDo
<http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Beaver+Barracks+shines+social+housing
+star/3655619/story.html#ixzz129QtWuDo> 

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Beaver+Barracks+shines+social+housing+
star/3655619/story.html

Lynne Browne

Coordinator, Alliance to End Homelessness 

lbrowne at ysb.on.ca <mailto:lbrowne at ysb.on.ca> 

Office: 613-241-1573, ext. 205 (Temp. # )

Mail to: 147 Besserer St., Ottawa, ON K1N 6A7

www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca <http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca> 

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