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Organization: The Wellesley Institute
Publication Date: 2009
While everybody is affected by a pandemic, everyone is not affected equally. People with compromised health face greater risks, and those with less income have less ability to take the practical steps to mitigate their risk. For instance, people living in homeless shelters with dozens or even hundreds of others cannot simply “stay at home and avoid contact with others” – which is advice commonly given during pandemics.
Pandemic planning, and emer...
Organization: The Wellesley Institute
Publication Date: 2006
Toronto’s homeless street count and needs assessment has generated plenty of controversy. This Wellesley Institute backgrounder, prepared by Michael Shapcott, looks at the issues and concerns about counting the homeless.
Publication Date: 2008
On the eve of the first provincial-territorial housing ministers’ summit in almost two and onehalf years, a new report card from the Wellesley Institute reveals that the federal government and eight of the thirteen provinces and territories have failed to meet the commitments for new housing funding that they made in November of 2001. Starting in 2001, the federal government promised in an agreement with all the provinces and territories to a...
Publication Date: 2012
There is an extensive body of academic, policy-related and community based literature that describes the powerful nature of housing as a social determinant of population health. The relationship that exists between poor housing (or a lack of housing) and poor mental and physical health is well-documented. From structural to social issues, there are a myriad of concerns that surface including (but not limited to): density of housing; internal cond...
Publication Date: 2012
Canada’s federal government has failed to meet the housing commitments that it made to the United Nation’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of 2009. That’s a key observation in the Wellesley Institute’s submission to the upcoming United Nation’s review of Canada’s international human rights obligations, set for early in 2013. Canada has signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and numerous other international legal...
Organization: Wellesley Institute
Publication Date: 2006
Builders use a detailed blueprint to guide them from a good idea to a finished structure. That’s the idea behind the Blueprint to End Homelessness in Toronto.Our blueprint starts with the foundation of more than 30 years of detailed research and reports on housing and homelessness in Toronto by governments, academics and community groups. It is a rich accumulation of material that has been largely shelved and ignored to date. The blueprint also a...
Publication Date: 2011
Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) — the City of Toronto’s affordable housing agency — is making the unprecedented recommendation to sell-off more than 700 affordable homes at a time when the city’s waiting list for affordable housing sets new all-time record highs month after month. TCHC says that it urgently needs the cash from the sale of the homes to pay for a big capital repair bill for its portfolio of 58,000+ housing units and th...
Publication Date: 2001
The Ontario government transferred the cost of provincial social housing programs to municipalities in January of 1998. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing put the total cost, at that time, at $905 million. Last year, the ministry started billing municipalities for the cost of the provincial bureaucrats who administer Ontario’s social housing programs. About 250,000 social housing households are directly affected by the provincial tr...
Publication Date: 2000
As the Government of Ontario prepares for the year 2000 budget, co-op members from every part of the province have an important message for this committee: please don’t ignore the serious housing crisis facing Ontario. The government has a responsibility to take action to ensure that everyone has a decent place to call home. We have two concerns to present to the committee today. The province must ensure: - there is enough new affordable ho...
Publication Date: 1999
Our members - nearly 800 member-owned and managed non-profit housing co-operatives - are located in all parts of Canada. There are 52,000 households living in our member co-ops, and we represent a further 13,000 co-op households in Quebec. They play an important role in providing safe, affordable housing to Canadians. As the Committee knows, most of Canada’s housing co-operatives were put in place between 1970 and 1992 under programs administe...
Publication Date: 2011
For all of the talk about the real estate and building boom, there is downside to the story. Families, seniors, low and even middle income Ontarians face rising prices that make it tough to find housing they can afford. Last year the waitlist for social housing in the province grew by almost 10% with more than 140,000 households looking for assistance. Why has low income housing been such an intractable problem, and who should be doing what to he...
Organization: Wellesley Institute
Publication Date: 2010
Research can contribute to ending homelessness
Michael Shapcott is Director, Affordable Housing and Social Innovation at the Wellesley Institute, an independent, non-profit research and policy dedicated to advancing urban health.
Research is critically important in terms of homelessness for a number of factors. Getting a basic statistical profile of homelessness is surprisingly difficult in a country like Canada, where we have all sorts of numb...
Publication Date: 2010
The Ontario government has moved quickly to introduce draft legislation to replace the Social Housing Reform Act yesterday, tabling Bill 140 in the Legislature on the same day that it announced its proposed new provincial affordable housing plan.
Publication Date: 2010
The Ontario government has put up the scaffolding for a long-term affordable housing strategy, but there’s plenty of unfinished business for Queen’s Park as it seeks to build a truly comprehensive plan to ensure everyone has access to a healthy, affordable home. There are no targets, timelines and no new housing investments. After six months of consultations, more than 1,000 detailed submissions and a year of writing, Ontario housing minist...
Publication Date: 1999
Ontario Finance Minister Ernie Eves delivered an optimistic Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review in the Ontario Legislature today. The picture is not so rosy for homeless people and low-income households in Ontario. Hundreds of thousands of homeless and low-income tenants suffer under provincial policies The Ontario government's massive cuts to housing spending and programs have helped generate an "unprecedented" housing cr...
About 162,000 Ontarians with special nutrition needs were told in yesterday’s Ontario budget that their special diet allowance is being cancelled and will be replaced, at some point, with an unspecified new mechanism. Access to nutritious food is one of the most important fundamentals for good health. Sick and Tired, research funded by the Wellesley Institute, demonstrates the poor health status of low-income Ontarians who rely on provincial soci...
Publication Date: 2007
Ontario's spending on affordable housing has been flatlined for several years , one reason why the provincial government has fallen far short of the targets that it has set for new affordable homes. The Wellesley Institute's Ontario pre-budget backgrounder provides some advance information as Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara prepares to deliver the provincial budget on March 22, 2007.
Publication Date: 2007
Millions of Canadians are suffering in a nation-wide affordable housing crisis, even though Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. The 2007 federal budget is a good opportunity to launch a new national housing program. The Wellesley Institute 2007 pre-budget backgrounder offers an outline of the problem and the solution.
Publication Date: 2007
Bad now , worse to come: That's the verdict in the Wellesley Institute backgrounder on cuts to the federal homelessness program. Toronto, Guelph, Peel, London, Windsor, Ottawa and Yellowknife have all reported cuts in 2006 funding under the Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative (the federal homelessness program). And the entire $134.8 million program is set to expire in March of 2007 , unless the feds make a commitment to renew it.
Publication Date: 2007
Philip Mangano, was appointed as U.S. President Bush’s “homeless czar”, traveling across the U.S. - and Canada - spreading the message that local communities should adopt 10-year plans to end homelessness. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has been cutting funding for key housing initiatives. His message is familiar to Canadians, who have lived through two decades of federal and provincial housing cost-cutting and downloading. Read more in...