Douglas Todd: The painful demographics of homelessness

2022/04/07 Leave a comment

Some interesting data:

They are injured construction workers who need to kill the pain, ex-soldiers with trauma, spouses escaping conflict and First Nations members who can’t get housing on their reserves.

Such histories are common among the men who make up 68 per cent of all homeless in British Columbia, according to Judy Graves, who spent three decades as a champion for people forced onto the street and into shelters, including as the city of Vancouver’s full-time homeless advocate.

“Many men become disposable at certain times in their lives,” said Graves. They wind up surviving in shelters, in tents or couch surfing because their jobs or families have fallen apart and they have been struck down by despair or succumbed to addiction.

Graves put forth many reasons why men are so overrepresented in B.C.’s latest homeless count, which was released this month and focused more than in the past on demographics. The count discovered 8,665 people in the province without shelter, a rise of 11 per cent from 2018.

Many of the men, according to 25 counts across the province, come from the unusually high proportion of Indigenous people, former military personnel and Black Canadians who are homeless.

Almost two of five homeless residents are Indigenous, even though Indigenous people make up only one in 20 of the population. Six per cent served with the military or the RCMP, which makes them “vastly overrepresented” among those without a home.

For the first time, the provincewide count included data on race. While it found 63 per cent of the homeless are white people, which is roughly equivalent to the overall ratio, it discovered three per cent were Black people, even though only one per cent of B.C.’s population is Black.

South Asian people comprised only two per cent of the homeless, which is much lower than the overall cohort of 11 per cent. And East Asians, including ethnic Chinese, accounted for just two per cent, even though they make up 12 per cent of all residents. Graves owed such findings in part to “strong cultural support for families.”

As someone who has taken part in many homeless counts and continues to meet with street people across Metro Vancouver, Graves has talked with men from a range of ethnic backgrounds and nationalities who have ended up desperate for provisional shelter.

Many had become addicted to opioids after becoming repeatedly injured in construction, the military, policing or other physically dangerous jobs, which are mostly held by men, she said. “They get caught between their pain and being out of the workforce.”

A lot of men she’s come to know have also left their homes because of conflict with a spouse or partner, which is the reason 14 per cent of B.C. residents reported they’re homeless. “That’s a really big one.”

While there is already a large amount of government housing provided exclusively for women, including transition shelters for those facing domestic violence, Graves said there is none specifically for men, including for fathers and their children. She believes there should be.

“I think marriage break up is actually harder on men than women,” she said, explaining that many women quickly gain support from their social network, while men often turn to drinking alone. “Men really need support and counselling right after a domestic conflict.”

The Ministry of Housing did not respond directly to many Postmedia questions about homelessness, including why there are no shelters distinctly for males given the government’s emphasis on putting every policy through a “gender lens.”

Instead, spokesperson Sarah Budd maintained the NDP government believes homeless women are undercounted; so it wants to provide them with more housing.

Graves calls Victoria’s approach “reverse gender politics.”

One of the reasons, Graves added, that such a large proportion of Indigenous men and women end up on the streets, living in tents or in shelters is a lack of housing on reserves across Canada.

“A lot of the housing on reserves was built 40 years ago and is falling apart,” she said, noting First Nations people on reserves aren’t permitted to own their own dwellings.

“It was also built only for families and is often unbelievably crowded.” There are, she said, almost no small housing units on reserves for single people, who are the most likely to need a place to live.

The number of foreign-born people who are homeless in B.C. almost doubled compared to the last count in 2018, rising to eight per cent of the total.

But that is far below their provincial average, which has immigrants, refugees and those seeking permanent resident status making up one out of three residents. Graves suggested that foreign-born homeless people might be undercounted since those who have “uncertain immigration status” would tend to hide from counters.

“People have to be trained on where to look.”

The Housing Ministry said in this year’s budget spending on “housing and homelessness supports reached more than $1.2 billion a year for the next three years — three times the level of funding in 2017.”

Source: Douglas Todd: The painful demographics of homelessness

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Growing number of newcomers, refugees ending up homeless in Canada: studies

2019/08/12 Leave a comment

Given the tight housing market and prices in larger cities, not surprising:

A growing number of newcomers to Canada are ending up in shelters or are finding themselves homeless, newly released government figures show.

Two new reports released this week by Employment and Social Development Canada offer a glimpse into the extent of the homelessness problem across the country and reveal the populations that are most vulnerable.

The national shelter study, which looked at federal data on shelter users between 2005 and 2016, found an “observable increase” in refugees using shelters.

In 2016, there were 2,000 refugees sleeping in shelters, not counting those facilities designated specifically for refugees — an increase from 1,000 just two years earlier when the figures first began to be tracked.

Tim Richter, president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, said he believes refugees are being forced to turn to homeless shelters because of a lack of housing capacity in areas where refugees are settling.

“Many of them are coming to Toronto in Ontario, and to Quebec, and in those communities, the rental market is just really tight and we just don’t have the capacity to house them,” Richter said.

“Homelessness is a function of housing affordability, availability and income. When you’re new to Canada, you generally won’t have the income to be able to buy a house, and there’s just not enough affordable housing options.”

Canada has been experiencing an influx of asylum seekers crossing into Canada “irregularly,” avoiding official checkpoints between the Canada-U.S. border in order to file for refugee protection without being turned away under Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. Over 46,000 irregular border-crossers have been intercepted by RCMP since early 2017.

Many of them have been staying in Toronto and Montreal to await the outcome of their refugee claims, which has put pressure on temporary housing capacity in those cities.

The city of Toronto estimated in late 2018 that about 40 per cent of people using its shelters identified as refugees or asylum claimants. Other Ontario cities have been asked to help relocate refugees in order to ease the burden on Toronto’s shelter system.

Meanwhile, a second study released this week by Ottawa that offers a “point-in-time” snapshot of homelessness in 61 communities also noted a trend of homelessness among newcomers.

It found 14 per cent of people who identified as homeless in 2018 were newcomers to Canada. Of that total, eight per cent indicated they were immigrants, three per cent identified as refugees and four per cent as refugee claimants.

The point-in-time study captures not only those using shelters, but also people sleeping on the streets, in transitional houses or staying with others. The 2018 study expanded its counts from 32 communities in 2016 to 61 in 2018.

Both studies also found Canada’s Indigenous Peoples remain vastly over-represented among the country’s homeless population. Almost one-third of shelter users and those counted in the point-in-time report identified as Indigenous, despite making up only about five per cent of the national population.

It’s a consequence of multi-generational trauma endured by Indigenous populations in Canada, as outlined in the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the recently concluded inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, Richter said.

“This will require specific focus and specific investment if we’re going to help these folks.”

For those who do find themselves without a home, either for short periods or for those who are chronically homeless, their realities are stark and can be deadly.

A memorial dedicated to homeless individuals who have died on the streets of Toronto currently lists close to 1,000 names. Many are identified only as “John Doe” with the date they died.

But Richter said he is hopeful that things will improvements for Canada’s homeless.

He pointed to figures in the national shelter study showing an decrease of nearly 20 per cent in the overall number of people who accessed shelters between 2005 and 2016. Occupancy rates have increased over that period of time, however, due to a rise in the length of time people were staying in homeless shelters.

But many jurisdictions have been taking the issue seriously and making significant improvements, Richter said, pointing to a decrease in chronic homeless numbers in places like the southern Ontario communities of Chatham-Kent, Guelph, Kawartha and Haliburton.

“We’re seeing that it is possible, and we know how to do it, it’s just a matter of getting on with it,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we are going to see, now, consistent and focused trends going in the opposite direction.”

Source: Growing number of newcomers, refugees ending up homeless in Canada: studies

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