I am a street nurse in Toronto, but over the past three years I have visited more than two dozen Canadian communities facing an equally severe housing crisis. These communities invited me to examine their homeless situation and suggest strategies to make their political leaders listen up. I toured shelters, drop-ins, soup kitchens, food banks and outreach programs. I met with front-line workers and heard directly from homeless people. I met with charitable foundations, faith groups, university leaders and public health experts. In each community I took pictures of their wartime housing and asked to see their affordable housing units built in the '70s and '80s. Sadly, there were very few affordable housing units built in the last 15 years for me to tour. Why? Because our federal housing program (yes, we once had one!) was destroyed in 1993. Imagine if that happened to medicare. Since the demise of our housing program there have been only piecemeal, sparsely funded and minimalist programs.