By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Two things are common to all communities experiencing a homelessness crisis – high rents and low vacancies.
This summed up the message to an audience at a Friday breakfast at St. George’s Anglican Church in Grafton, where Transition House interim Executive Director Christian Harvey spoke.
Harvey is an Anglican Church Deacon who has long worked with vulnerable, unhoused and marginalized populations, most recently teaching at Fleming College and working on behalf of these people in the City of Peterborough.
And he thinks the first step to addressing the crisis is understanding it.
“I think there’s a lot of narratives out there that aren’t that helpful,” he told a group of more than 60 in the church’s Canon Nind Hall.
Complicating the issue is how it has affected public places – the parks people love, the downtowns where they shop – and how people mourn these losses as they no longer feel safe in these settings.
A January report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario said there are 85,000 homeless people in Ontario – enough to populate the City of Peterborough. It’s an 8% increase over 2024, and a number that is expected to hit 177,000 by 2035.
More than 50% of them are chronically homeless (having experienced homelessness for at least six months over the past year). And wait lists for affordable housing contain more than 300,000 names.
It’s a crisis happening everywhere (not just in Northumberland County) and many causes have been suggested – high unemployment, high substance-use rates, lax enforcement. These may be present in different municipalities, but the two causes common to every community dealing with high levels of homelessness are high rents and low vacancies.
And when they try to help the homeless individuals that result, Harvey said, there’s only so much they can do.
“How do we enforce our way out of this? How do we help people make better decisions? None of that has an impact.”
He likened the situation to a game of musical chairs, where you have a broken ankle and are one of five people circling four chairs. The music stops, and there you stand with your broken ankle.
“Why didn’t I get a chair? We could say I had a broken ankle, but the real reason I didn’t get a chair is, there weren’t enough chairs.”
And even though the broken ankle was a disadvantage, he continued, “someone was always not going to get a chair. That’s the reality of the situation. We could solve all our ankle problems, and someone would still go chairless.”
Making sure people have jobs, education and mental-health resources is vital work, he said.
“But all they are are indicators of who is vulnerable enough not to get a house that doesn’t exist.
“The reality is, in places where there’s low rent and high vacancies, people with mental health (issues) and addictions are housed. In places where there aren’t, they are not housed. We will never be able to enforce our way out of our housing crisis.”
No matter how the seated persons in that musical-chairs game make fun of the unseated guy with the broken ankle, he said, “it will not change the fact to motivate me to get a chair that doesn’t exist. We can make it more uncomfortable, but it doesn’t change the fact that there’s no housing for them to move into.
“It’s a housing-shortage crisis – our rents are too high and there’s not enough housing.”
In Grafton, there aren’t the parks and the bank vestibules that Cobourg has, but the homeless are out there couch-surfing and living in trailers and sheds.
Figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation set an average monthly rent as $1,297 for a one-bedroom unit and $1,363 for a two-bedroom one – and Cobourg rents are higher.
In Ontario, the Ontario Works income for a single person is $733 monthly, with ODSP being $1,408 for a single person. And the average salary on minimum wage is $2,464. No number of budget courses could teach how to cope with that disparity.
At Transition House, the shelter at 310 Division St. in Cobourg, “our vision is that all people have access to permanent and suitable housing.
“That’s what we want, but we recognize we do not offer housing. Shelter does not do anything to end our homeless crisis. What we do is help support individuals who have been left out of the housing market – a roof over their heads for the time when they try to find housing,” he explained.
The main floor is “where the hang happens. That’s where the cafeteria is, that’s where the TV is, that’s the common spaces.”
The second and third floors are shelter space, with 46 beds. Most rooms are double-occupancy, some take three people.
“We accept a limited amount of dogs, and people can come as a couple.”
The fourth floor is transitional housing, managed by Northumberland County, with Transition House operating the first three floors.
April statistics show a 99% occupancy rate, with 54 unique individuals served – 27 of them were over 50 years of age.
The disturbing statistic is that 47 people were turned away. It takes a lot of courage to ask, Harvey pointed out, and it would have been a crushing experience.
All but five of the people they served were not from Cobourg, and all were from Northumberland County.
To Harvey, this discredits the thought that Cobourg is some kind of promised land to which other municipalities ship their homeless – though, to be fair, many communities struggling with homelessness also believe other municipalities are shipping their homeless to their doors.
At Transition House, he continued, two resident service managers work with those in residence to connect them with housing and whatever other supports they need. And there is good news.
“We were able to house two individuals last month, and that’s really exciting, a local landlord coming to us and saying, ‘We have two units we’d like to rent at an affordable rate. Let’s make it happen.’ That’s incredible.”
As well, two gained employment, three received identification and one completed treatment.
A resident advisory committee was formed in October.
“They get together every Wednesday and discuss what changes they think need to happen. Their changes have made the shelter operate better, and it’s exciting to see them realize, ‘We have wisdom that matters.’”
They have just hired a cook, who – in addition to cooking for them – is helping residents develop skills that may help lead to employment in restaurants.
Still, he stated, “the issue is greater than we can meet.”
And every time someone must be turned away, “that should haunt us a little bit – these people that don’t have a space tonight, these people that don’t have a roof over their head.”
And they are fighting stigma – not only on behalf of the people they are helping but on behalf of staff who are also villainized by some for their work.
“We need to stop blaming the victim for the changes in our community, Harvey said, listing ways members of the community can help.
Donations to Transition House provide extras and initiatives that basic funding might not cover, for example. In that connection, admission to the Friday breakfast was by donation. From those in attendance, $2,384 in donations went to Transition House.
And advocate for housing, he urged,
“We need more housing, we need more entry-level housing, we need housing people can afford, we need a whole range of spaces, we need to be creative on every level.”
Among the barriers is living in an economy that has evolved to depend on the price of housing continually rising – creating an environment in which housing is an investment and not a need – which means provincial and Federal governments must be partners in creating non-market-value housing. And these efforts will be more effective to the degree that they can work in partnership with the private sector.
