Affordable housing: No place like home
A coalition of Hamilton charities – Hamilton is Home – is working to solve the housing crisis by building deeply affordable housing. The big question remains: Will the provincial government fund the services that will keep vulnerable people in those units?
As the holidays begin and winter closes in, life can go from bad to worse for homeless people. The dangers and hardship faced by individuals living outdoors in the summer multiply and become even more perilous as the temperatures drop and snowbanks pile up.
But this winter there are signs that life could get better for Hamilton’s homeless population. The City is investing in a big increase to the number of emergency shelter beds, bringing the total to 533, a 56 per cent increase. At the same time, it’s creating a site of small cabins – so-called tiny houses – for up to 80 additional people.
The plan is a necessary build-up of emergency housing for the 270 or so homeless individuals living in parks and other public spaces in Hamilton. But it’s not a long-term solution to the housing crisis.
“As a municipality we have a decision to make,” Mayor Andrea Horwath said in September. “Do we plow more money into shelters, knowing that’s not the answer, or do we utilize our financial ability to begin investing in permanent solutions, which is what our council has decided is the better way to go?”
Central to these permanent solutions is an ambitious strategy – known as Hamilton is Home – by a coalition of nonprofit housing organizations to create 3,000 affordable apartments. If successful, this bold plan could help to crack the housing crisis as well as providing accommodation for most of the people now living in the parks and on the streets.
“Coming together has become a way for us to build trust with each other, to share knowledge, to encourage each other and to say: ‘If we all did our best what would happen?’” says coalition chair Graham Cubitt. “If we could build 3,000 units, that would move the needle on the affordable housing crisis.”
By “move the needle,” Cubitt means the group could provide housing for thousands of the 6,100 people now on the City’s affordable housing waitlist. According to the Vital Signs report last year sponsored by the Hamilton Community Foundation, some of the people on that list have been waiting eight years for a single-family home or one-bedroom apartment. It’s a symptom of the dire straits now faced by low-income people on the knife-edge of homelessness.
The Hamilton is Home coalition is made up of seven nonprofit housing organizations serving a wide range of target groups. They have been meeting biweekly for over four years, urged on by Hamilton West MP and cabinet minister Filomena Tassi.
It includes CityHousing Hamilton, with its stock of 7,100 affordable rental units that are home to about 13,000 people, along with Indwell, Victoria Park Community Homes, Hamilton East Kiwanis, and Good Shepherd with more than 5,000 units collectively, as well as the YWCA, helping women and non-binary people, and Sacajawea, serving Indigenous communities.
Weeks after they first gathered in early 2020, the COVID pandemic erupted, delaying their plans. But the group is back on track, and has about 1,500 units in development, about halfway toward their goal, to be funded largely with government subsidies and financing from the federal Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
In the meantime, soaring rents and insufficient social and medical services have sent growing numbers of homeless people to parks and public spaces in Hamilton and in cities across the country. According to the City, there are more than 90 encampments now, and they are frequently sparking frustration and anger in neighbourhoods.
"We are now in a situation where there's a growing rage in the community," City councillor Ted McMeekin said in July.
In response, the group has sharpened its focus to concentrate on supportive housing, which is housing specifically targeted to vulnerable homeless people that can transition to independent affordable housing with the help of dedicated support staff.
Four of the seven organizations determined that they could quickly build 418 supportive housing units, more than enough to provide housing for people camped out in parks and public spaces, estimated by the City to be 267 in July. “If we could commit those units into action, we’d eliminate the crisis of street homelessness,” says Cubitt.
The tough part, he says, is not building the bricks and mortar for the buildings but convincing the provincial government to provide the social and medical services, including addiction and mental health care, to make the supportive housing plan work.
A simple idea
The Hamilton is Home coalition is based on a straightforward notion; namely, that nonprofit housing organizations can build supportive and affordable housing that would be impossible for the for-profit housing sector to create. Housing development companies sometimes create affordable homes as part of their plans, but these units are available at below-market rents, not the deeply affordable housing needed by low-income residents.
Nonprofits can create this housing because they have a mandate to serve what traditionally has been called “needy” communities – target groups requiring special supports to live and to thrive. What’s more, they can meet these needs without the additional layer of profit for investors demanding market returns on their capital.
Because of this absence of profit, nonprofits can accept donations of property, funds or government grants, enabling them to meet land and construction costs. Rents are usually paid by tenants out of the housing portion of their social assistance payments. Such “nonmarket” housing stays out of private hands and serves as a bulwark against rising rents and house prices.
Hamilton nonprofits have used these techniques creatively for years, says Tim Welch, a Cambridge-based consultant to the nonprofit housing sector for more than two decades.
Hamilton East Kiwanis, one of his clients, has used the equity from its nonprofit homes scattered around the city to move into larger-scale housing development. Sacajawea, another client, has used government funding for Indigenous communities to create safe housing rooted in unique cultural traditions for more than 100 people, including about 40 children.
Nonprofit housing is not a new idea. In fact, Canada was a major builder of nonmarket housing in the 1970s and 1980s. But the Brian Mulroney government brought an end to these programs.
“The nonprofit and co-op housing sector more or less collapsed after the federal government left the housing field in 1993 and the province totally ended its housing role in 1995,” says Welch.
In 2017, the federal government re-entered the housing field, committing $40 billion to its National Housing Strategy (including both market and nonmarket housing). Since then, it has added billions more to the program, most recently in 2022 with the $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF). Hamilton has been awarded $93.5 million in HAF funding, which has been used by the City to streamline its affordable housing grant programs together with a $31 million three-year commitment from City council.
Supportive housing cheaper than ERs
But here’s the problem. In order for members of the Hamilton is Home coalition to start construction on the 418 units of supportive housing it has identified, it needs government, and primarily the Ontario government, to agree to $24 million annually in operating dollars for social and health services – essential services in the supportive housing model. To date, that funding has not been forthcoming.
In Canada, the provinces have primary responsibility for health and social service funding.
Yet, says Cubitt, the Ontario government has declined to fund these services for supportive housing prior to project approval. Without that funding, projects are unable to get construction financing from federal or local governments, CMHC or the banks. “If you can’t secure the operating funding until maybe six months after opening, you can’t get past the start line.”
The frustrating thing, he says, is that it’s cheaper for governments to fund supportive housing facilities than to serve the homeless population through high-cost emergency services.
Many homeless people are frequent users of ambulance services, emergency rooms and the police. Toronto’s University Health Network, for example, has identified 51 patients with no fixed address who visited the city’s emergency rooms more than 3,300 times in 2023. The average hospital stay in Canada for a homeless person is 15 days at a cost of $16,800. By contrast, patients with homes stay an average of eight days and cost only $7,800.
Because of the patchwork of funding, it’s not possible to shift police or health budgets to supportive housing. But Cubitt says funds for supportive housing would create future savings for police, hospital and ambulance services.
“We can add more ambulances, but that’s extremely expensive,” he says. “Or we can just stop the cycling of the same person who goes to hospital every three days because they’re in mental health distress, and the only option they have is to call 911.”
Ontario’s big-city mayors are calling on Ontario to work with the other levels of government to fund supportive housing. The Hamilton is Home proposal could provide a model for how this could work.
The coalition has launched a campaign urging MPs, MPPs and City councillors to fund supportive housing. Find information here.
The province can choose between “bigger band-aids,” says Cubitt, or permanent solutions at less cost. “There are huge dollars to save, especially in terms of not constantly ratcheting up very expensive interventions.”
A place to live means so much
Crystal Davis was forced to live in shelters and to use ERs to handle her severe anxiety until she found housing that supported her.
Crystal Davis immigrated to Hamilton as a teenager in 2005 from Jamaica with her abusive father and stepmother. When she tried to talk to her stepmother about the abuse, she didn’t believe Crystal. The following year, at age 16, she left home.
“I told my stepmom ‘I’d rather live in a shelter than stay here and suffer,’” she says.
On the streets, Davis became pregnant. One day, the father of her unborn child invited her up to his apartment, where he put a pillow over her face. She escaped.
For the next five years, the shelter system became her only option. Nights were occupied with two other people in a cramped room. Shelter rules forced her to leave during the day, so she spent time between breakfast and dinner on the streets or hanging out at Jackson Square.
Struggling with chronic anxiety and heartbroken because her two young children were taken into care, Davis suffered bouts of anxiety, experiencing years of frequent hospital visits, sometimes twice in the same day.
Then, one day in 2011, a friend found an internet notice for an opening in a supportive housing unit at the Perkins Centre on Main Street East, managed by nonprofit housing provider Indwell. After a few years at Perkins, which has full-time support staff, she transferred to a larger one-bedroom unit across the street at Indwell’s Rudy Hulst Commons.
Rudy Hulst is unlike anything she experienced in the shelters. Opened in 2016, the building is bathed in sunlight, equipped with large windows overlooking the city and the escarpment. It doesn’t have full-time support staff, but there are staff on site for friendly conversation or to call for medical or other assistance if needed.
“If you’re going through a rough time or whatever you can go there and they will talk to you and help you cope with the situation.”
Now at age 34, Davis has a boyfriend at her side, and hasn’t visited a hospital in three years, confirming both her courage, and the benefits of a safe place to live.
“I couldn’t ask for anything better.”
Invest your dollars for housing
Indwell, a Christian housing charity, is using a community bond with investments from individuals and institutions to build housing in Hamilton.
Unlike real estate development companies, nonprofit housing providers have no sources of private equity to construct new houses. But this disadvantage doesn’t mean they can’t raise investment funds from their local communities.
That’s exactly what Indwell, a Hamilton-based Christian housing charity, has done in 2024 with its Hope and Homes Hamilton Community Bond, offering ordinary investors and institutions a chance to help build affordable housing while also earning a modest investment return.
The offering was so popular, says Graham Cubitt, the group’s director of projects and development, that Indwell raised the investment target for the bond from $5 million to $6 million. “There’s huge demand for people who want to invest in multiple benefits – the financial for themselves, but also the social and environmental benefits.”
Proceeds from the bond purchase are being used to create more than 140 units of new supportive housing in Hamilton by covering planning, site preparation, building fees, development charges and other pre-development costs.
The bond was offered under five options, ranging from a three-year $1,000 minimum investment offering an annual interest return of 3.5 per cent to a five-year $50,000 minimum investment for institutions at 5 per cent interest.
Community bonds are becoming more popular for affordable housing across Canada, says Tapestry Capital, an advisory service for nonprofits. In August, Tapestry announced it is working with 11 nonprofits – including Indwell – working to raise $110 million in community bonds for affordable housing.
Indwell plans to continue raising funds through its community bond program for future housing projects.
Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He lives in Hamilton.
