Question Period Note: ELIMINATING CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS

What is the Government of Canada doing to eliminate chronic homelessness?

• Everyone in Canada deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. One of the most important roles of our government during this global pandemic is to support Canadians experiencing or at-risk of homelessness.

• Eliminating chronic homelessness is a complex challenge that will take time, resources, and coordination with partners to achieve. To support this work, Budget 2021 proposes an additional $567 million over two years for Reaching Home to help communities to maintain their emergency measures, while we work with partners towards eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada.

• We recognize there is still much work to do and we continue to work with Indigenous partners and housing providers to address the critical housing needs of Indigenous peoples living in urban, rural and northern communities. It will be imperative to prevent and reduce Indigenous homelessness if we are to meet the ambitious goal of eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada.

Reaching Home is a community-based program that provides funding directly to specific communities through the Designated Communities, Indigenous Homelessness, Rural and Remote Homelessness and Territorial Homelessness streams. Financial support is provided to 64 Designated Communities (urban centres), the 3 territorial capitals, 30 Indigenous communities and rural and remote communities across Canada to support their efforts in preventing and reducing homelessness. It also makes funding available to Indigenous partners to support distinctions-based approaches to homelessness services.
Outside of Quebec, Reaching Home funding is delivered under a Community Entity model, under which one organization (a municipality or non-profit) is responsible for identifying and managing projects based on locally identified needs and priorities.
In Quebec, the Designated Communities stream and the Rural and Remote Homelessness stream are governed by Canada-Quebec Agreements that reflect the jurisdictions and priorities of both governments. The Indigenous Homelessness stream in the province is administered by Service Canada throughout the province. This stream is not under a Canada-Quebec Agreement.
Individuals and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness are at heightened risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions, increased transience, and reduced opportunities to self-isolate. This higher risk impacts not only those individuals, but also those serving them, and the broader community at large. The COVID-19 outbreak has placed significant pressures on an already-stretched homeless-serving sector, which has been forced to overhaul service delivery to reduce the risk of potential outbreaks.
Utilizing the Reaching Home delivery network, the Government of Canada acted quickly to provide support to communities as the outbreak began. In March 2020, $15 million in Departmental lapses was reallocated through Reaching Home to provide immediate support to the seven communities with the largest shelter capacity: Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton and Peel Region. Building on this immediate support, on March 18, 2020, the Government of Canada announced an additional $157.5 million for Reaching Home to support people experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 outbreak. On September 21, 2020, the Government announced an additional $236.7 million in program funding to support communities in maintaining emergency measures and to enhance their capacity for more sustainable responses to the pandemic and homelessness. Emergency funding was secured under s. 2(1) of the Public Health Events of National Concern Payments Act.
With the help of emergency funding for the homelessness sector, communities have taken urgent action to try to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among those experiencing homelessness including efforts to reduce overcrowding in shelters, establish isolation spaces and place individuals in hotels/motels. These efforts have been effective. Based on ongoing information received from Reaching Home communities, available data on COVID-19 and media reports, it appears that there were no large-scale outbreaks amongst those experiencing homelessness. However, challenges have occurred in the shelter system with the second and third waves, particularly in larger communities such as Toronto and Montreal. Until a sufficient proportion of the Canadian population is vaccinated to reduce the risk of infection, people experiencing homelessness remain at higher risk to contract and spread the virus.
In November 2020, the Government announced through the Fall Economic Statement an additional $299.4 million through Reaching Home in 2021-22. In addition to extending emergency measures, this investment will support communities in shifting focus towards housing stability, including ensuring those who have been temporarily housed transition to more stable housing, and providing more targeted support to individuals at risk of losing housing.
In April 2021, the Budget announced an additional $567 million over two years through Reaching Home, beginning in 2022-23 to maintain the 2021-22 funding levels announced in the Fall Economic Statement in response to the pressures of COVID-19.
Key Components of Reaching Home

Moving to an Outcomes-Based Approach: Under Reaching Home, the Government is working with communities to develop and deliver data-driven system plans with clear outcomes. The new outcomes-based approach will give communities greater flexibility to address local priorities, including homelessness prevention, and programming designed to meet the needs of vulnerable populations (for example, youth, women and children fleeing violence, and veterans). To track the progress being made by communities in their effort to prevent and reduce homelessness, communities will be asked to report publicly on community-wide outcomes.

Introducing Coordinated Access: Designated Communities are required to implement Coordinated Access, by March 31, 2022. The goal of Coordinated Access is to help communities achieve community-wide outcomes by ensuring fairness, prioritizing people most in need of assistance, and matching individuals to appropriate housing and services in a more streamlined and coordinated way.

Key Stats on Homelessness in Canada

According to Employment and Social Development Canada, the number of shelter users decreased from 156,000 in 2005 to 130,000 in 2017. This decline is mainly due to a decrease in the number of shelter users between the ages of 25 and 49. Despite a decrease in shelter users, occupancy rates have increased since 2005 due to longer shelter stays, especially among older adults, seniors and families, and have consistently remained above 90% since 2012. Other key facts include:

• Women make up 28.3% of emergency shelter users, and the gender breakdown of shelter users has not changed since 2005;
• Family shelters operate at high capacity. In 2017, the average occupancy rate at family shelters was 87.7%, approximately twenty percentage points higher than the 67.3% occupancy rate reported in 2005;
• Indigenous peoples remain overrepresented in the emergency shelter system. The percentage of shelter users in Canada reporting Indigenous ancestry is approximately 24%, whereas 5% of the Canadian population was identified as Indigenous in the 2016 census;
• An estimated 20,600 young people (aged 13-24) make up the shelter user population, which remains slightly overrepresented in shelters compared to the general population.
• Among shelter users, approximately 29,000 individuals in Canada were chronically homeless in 2017;
• The number of shelter users between the ages of 50 and 64 has increased by 25% between 2005 and 2016. There are relatively few shelter users aged 65 and over, however, the number of seniors accessing emergency shelter services has increased by 50% between 2005 and 2016; and,
• The proportion of emergency shelter users who reported having served in the military declined from 2.2% in 2014 (nearly 3,000 individuals) to 2.0% in 2017 (an estimated 2,650 individuals).

Results from the 2018 Coordinated Point-in-Time Count show that in the 61 participating communities, 60% of the people that were homeless on the night of the count had been homeless for six or more months during the previous year. Additionally, key demographic findings show that:

• Nearly one third (30%) of all respondents indicated that they first experienced homelessness under the age of 18, and a further 20% between the ages of 18 and 24;
• 25% indicated they had not use a shelter in the past year;
• 36% of respondents identified as women;
• 11% of respondents identified as LGBTQ2;
• 30% of respondents identified as Indigenous;
• 4% of respondents reported that they came to Canada as a refugee claimant; and,
• Approximately 5% of respondents indicated that they were a veteran of either the Canadian Armed Forces or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

• As part of the National Housing Strategy, the Government of Canada announced an investment of $2.2 billion over 10 years to prevent and reduce homelessness, and support a broader NHS objective of reducing chronic homelessness by 50% by 2027-28. On April 1, 2019, the Government of Canada launched Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy.
• Individuals and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness are at heightened risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions, increased need for transience and reduced opportunities to self-isolate.
• As part of Canada's COVID-19 Economic Response Plan, the Government announced a total of $394.2 million in additional funding for Reaching Home in 2020-21, to address the needs of those experiencing homelessness in the face of the COVID-19 crisis by supporting measures such as temporary accommodations and isolation centres to reduce shelter overcrowding.
• Indigenous people continue to be overrepresented within the homeless population. This overrepresentation is linked to experiences of colonialism and intergenerational trauma, as well as to a number of structural, systemic, individual or relational factors.
• On September 23, 2020, the Speech from the Throne committed to building on the work of the National Housing Strategy by focusing on “entirely eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada.”
• On November 30, 2020, the Fall Economic Statement announced additional funding of $299.4 million in 2021-22 through Reaching Home to enable physical distancing, cleaning and other emergency health and safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in shelters. Funding will also help prevent at-risk Canadians from becoming homeless by supporting targeted interventions that enable people to stay housed. Of this, over $62 million will be invested in the Indigenous Homelessness stream and $4.7 million will support Modern Treaty Holders to provide increased support.
• On April 19, 2021, Budget 2021 announced an additional $567 million over two years, beginning in 2022-23 through Reaching Home to maintain the 2021-22 funding levels announced in the Fall Economic Statement in response to the pressures of COVID-19. The Budget reiterated the Government's commitment eliminate chronic homelessness.