Some of you may remember that I wrote an impassioned letter to the powers that be (and the powers that want to be) about the housing crisis I find myself being ground up in. I sent it to a lot of people. NDP Housing Critic David Eby sent an immediate automated reply and then I got put on his mailing list but he never actually responded (though at least I know he's fighting the good fight). Nor did Christie Clark, our premier, who, as Eby points out, is pretending to be concerned about the subject now that it is an election year (see the good fight mentioned above).
The first reply I got was from Gregor Robertson, our mayor.
Message body
Hi Casey,
I wanted to thank you for sharing your story with me. Your experience is a stark reminder of why our work at the City is so important, and why we need to do more.
Right now, the City has more than 1,000 new affordable homes for seniors, working people, and families in the works – but we know it’s still not enough, and we’re constantly looking for new ways to get more housing built.
We also can’t solve Vancouver’s housing crisis alone. Our provincial government needs to create stronger protection for renters and much tougher penalties on landlords who break the rules. We need to strengthen our social security system with changes like higher welfare and disability rates. And most importantly, we need our provincial and federal governments to contribute their share to building more affordable housing. I’m going to keep calling on them to step up, and I hope you will too.
We have a huge task ahead of us, but I’m not backing down, and I’ll keep doing everything I can to protect renters and get more housing built.
Best wishes,
Gregor
Yesterday I received a second reply, from Jenny Kwan, who was for many years my MLA and is now my MP. This is what she said.
Message body
Good afternoon Casey,
Thank you for CCing me on your letter to the Mayor and others, and please accept my apologies for my lengthy delay in replying to you (your e-mail somehow ended up in my junk mail folder). You raise important points and, as such, I am very glad that you have written to me. I am also glad that you have included so many political representatives (including your MLA as well as the Mayor) in your email, as these are inter-jurisdictional issues.
The issue of safe, secure, and affordable housing is indeed a personal one for me, and I believe that housing is not simply a privilege, but a human right. That is why in my response to Budget 2016 last spring I called on the federal government to invest in a National Affordable Housing Program. Indeed, we would today have an additional half a million affordable housing units throughout the country had the Liberal Government not cancelled Canada’s National Affordable Housing Program in 1993. Since the cancellation of the National Affordable Housing Program we have seen record homelessness numbers. Families, including single parents and seniors, are unable to obtain safe, secure, and affordable housing. This local and national problem is now of crisis proportions, and is steadily worsening; this year, for example, the City of Vancouver reported a 6% year-over-year increase in the homeless population, the highest since 2005, when the count began. I fully anticipate that we will see a further spike in these numbers when the next homelessness count is done in March 2017.
More and more Canadians are speaking up about the affordable house crisis that his country if faced with. This is illustrated from the Liberal government's findings from its recent round of consultation on Canada's National Housing Strategy. A comprehensive report is supposed to be release in 2017. Key themes that came through in Canadians' feedback in this round include:
- Helping those in greatest need
- Helping Indigenous peoples achieve better housing outcomes for themselves
- Eliminating homelessness
- Making housing more affordable
- Adopting a housing systems perspective
- Housing policies and programs should center on people and place
- Setting clear outcomes and targets
- Delivering long-term and predictable funding
- Realizing the right to housing
- Improving data collection, analysis and research
- Taking a collaborative approach to housing
Many of these themes speak to the issues faced by so many across the entire spectrum of housing needs, from emergency housing to affordable homes.
I am pleased that the government has recognized the kinds of struggles so many of my Vancouver East constituents are struggling with and calling for. However, words are one thing, and actions are another, and Liberal governments have time and time again promised one thing only to deliver another. We cannot afford to stall on this human rights issue any longer. As such, I am sincerely hoping that the Prime Minister and Jean-Yves Duclos, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development will do much better than their Liberal predecessors.
They could demonstrate their commitment by endorsing Bill C-325, tabled earlier this week by my colleague NDP MP Rachel Blaney. This Bill aims to add Housing to Canada’s Bill of Rights.
Casey, you can count on me to continue fighting alongside my New Democrat colleagues to see that the Liberal government puts in place a National Housing Strategy that addresses homelessness and ensures safe, secure access to affordable housing, from coast to coast.
Please note that I am planning to host a town hall on housing in early-mid February, which I would love to have you attend. I will announce the details on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JennyKwanVanEast/) and website (jennykwan.ndp.ca).
Thank you again for writing, Casey. I look forward to hearing from you again.
Jenny Kwan
Member of Parliament for Vancouver East
Thank you for CCing me on your letter to the Mayor and others, and please accept my apologies for my lengthy delay in replying to you (your e-mail somehow ended up in my junk mail folder). You raise important points and, as such, I am very glad that you have written to me. I am also glad that you have included so many political representatives (including your MLA as well as the Mayor) in your email, as these are inter-jurisdictional issues.
The issue of safe, secure, and affordable housing is indeed a personal one for me, and I believe that housing is not simply a privilege, but a human right. That is why in my response to Budget 2016 last spring I called on the federal government to invest in a National Affordable Housing Program. Indeed, we would today have an additional half a million affordable housing units throughout the country had the Liberal Government not cancelled Canada’s National Affordable Housing Program in 1993. Since the cancellation of the National Affordable Housing Program we have seen record homelessness numbers. Families, including single parents and seniors, are unable to obtain safe, secure, and affordable housing. This local and national problem is now of crisis proportions, and is steadily worsening; this year, for example, the City of Vancouver reported a 6% year-over-year increase in the homeless population, the highest since 2005, when the count began. I fully anticipate that we will see a further spike in these numbers when the next homelessness count is done in March 2017.
More and more Canadians are speaking up about the affordable house crisis that his country if faced with. This is illustrated from the Liberal government's findings from its recent round of consultation on Canada's National Housing Strategy. A comprehensive report is supposed to be release in 2017. Key themes that came through in Canadians' feedback in this round include:
- Helping those in greatest need
- Helping Indigenous peoples achieve better housing outcomes for themselves
- Eliminating homelessness
- Making housing more affordable
- Adopting a housing systems perspective
- Housing policies and programs should center on people and place
- Setting clear outcomes and targets
- Delivering long-term and predictable funding
- Realizing the right to housing
- Improving data collection, analysis and research
- Taking a collaborative approach to housing
Many of these themes speak to the issues faced by so many across the entire spectrum of housing needs, from emergency housing to affordable homes.
I am pleased that the government has recognized the kinds of struggles so many of my Vancouver East constituents are struggling with and calling for. However, words are one thing, and actions are another, and Liberal governments have time and time again promised one thing only to deliver another. We cannot afford to stall on this human rights issue any longer. As such, I am sincerely hoping that the Prime Minister and Jean-Yves Duclos, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development will do much better than their Liberal predecessors.
They could demonstrate their commitment by endorsing Bill C-325, tabled earlier this week by my colleague NDP MP Rachel Blaney. This Bill aims to add Housing to Canada’s Bill of Rights.
Casey, you can count on me to continue fighting alongside my New Democrat colleagues to see that the Liberal government puts in place a National Housing Strategy that addresses homelessness and ensures safe, secure access to affordable housing, from coast to coast.
Please note that I am planning to host a town hall on housing in early-mid February, which I would love to have you attend. I will announce the details on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JennyKwanVanEast/) and website (jennykwan.ndp.ca).
Thank you again for writing, Casey. I look forward to hearing from you again.
Jenny Kwan
Member of Parliament for Vancouver East
So what do these responses mean for me and my neighbours, on the ground, today? Well, not a lot. It is good that there are people who are trying to realize affordable housing in Canada, and it is indeed a travesty that the federal government ditched its commitment to, for instance, co-op housing many years ago. But the cold hard truth is that I very well may not find housing that allows me to stay in my neighbourhood, with all the supports I have developed over many years, or indeed any housing at all, before my building is torn down, and that the situation is even worse for some of my neighbours. Although I can't find a whisper about it online, a week or so ago I heard a CBC Radio One news story reporting that at one agency that helps seniors, requests for help in finding housing have doubled in the last year, and that there has been an increase in seniors having to turn to short term shelters, sleeping in cars and car parks, couch surfing with friends, and so on as they continue to lose their homes in this inhumane housing market.
Resisting my impulse to hide under the bed, I have diligently gone through the subsidized housing lists and eyeballed every place in a fair circle around my current home, and I have been worried by what I've seen. Many look so run down that I fear they, too, will be torn down and their tenants turned out. Others have reputations for bad maintenance and unhappy atmospheres. My blood congeals at the thought of living in such a depressing place. So I have looked for the places where people seem happier, where the building is well maintained and the apartments hold some promise of light and comfort. A couple of weeks ago I visited the place I first set my heart on and learned they had just let a suite to someone who had been on the waitlist for four years. Four years! And the waitlists are far longer now than when this person applied.
After this blow I spent a day looking at videos on how to live in a van, but my doctor immediately put the kibosh on that. “Not with your health issues.” (What about a caravan? I like horses. A tipi, a travois and a great big dog? The undercarriage of a bus?)
Many of the things I have learned in my search have shocked me, and increased the attendant anxiety enormously. Two of them have to do with how housing subsidies work in BC.
First: you are only allowed to say no once to an offer of housing. If you say no a second time, you are dropped off the list. So if, say, you are sick and unable to move, or taking care of a dying friend, or allergic to something in the building once you finally are allowed to see it (remember that we are applying for apartments we have never seen, in buildings we have never stepped into, except, if we are lucky, into the lobby and the office), you risk losing any hope of housing at all by not taking what is offered.
Second: once you have moved into subsidized housing, that's it. You can't say in a year, or five years, or ten, I really made a mistake. I can't get to the grocery store, I am cut off from my friends, the manager is a bully, or I just plain don't like it here. Only in very rare cases are you allowed to move to another building, unless, of course, you give up your subsidy. Back to square one or worse—onto the street. So this means you have to get it right the first time. And how do you get this right?
Like me, with the first news that we were losing our home, most of my neighbours were roused to a flurry of investigation into the housing market. A few soon subsided into despair and paralysis. Some, who are not in quite such desperate circumstances, into procrastination. Why move now into a place where they will be paying at least $500 more a month? Better to hang on as long as they can.
And so we wait. And the wheels grind slowly around us. I have put in my applications, written my cover letters, brought in fabulous references. I am hatching plans to see how I can build connections with some of these communities, to find a way in. I am in no hurry to leave my beloved home and neighbours, believe me. I am relieved to have the space to start catching up on other projects. But I am so afraid.
Image: BC Landlord Guide: Eviction since the Tenant no longer qualifies for subsidized-housing"
2 comments:
Oh my God Casey 🙁 I really don't know what the heck to say. I pray for a safe , clean home for you....I fear you will have to search much further from your area...so very difficult I'm sure for you. All I can do is pray and send you a gigantic hug and love
Ah, dear, Pat. I fear so, too, but I won't apply to them yet, for fear of getting in somewhere I don't want to be when somewhere I DO want to be might call a few months later... A gamble, but my only chance.
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