CBC Ottawa visited a number of apartments that have been destroyed by Housing First-supported clients and their guests. Landlords we spoke with say the syste...
It really seems to me that municipalities simply don’t have the resources to support housing. Housing is a national problem and leaving it up to municipalities only creates perverse incentives to drive people experiencing homelessness out of your community into another, which isn’t doing anything to solve the underlying problem. We need a national housing first program, but this story demonstrates the importance of getting it right.
Governments should also be building public housing, like yesterday. People scapegoat landlords a lot but they are also subject to the laws of supply and demand. The only two levers the government has are to decrease demand (e.g. cracking down on short term rentals, stunting our economy by limiting population growth) and increasing supply (e.g. zoning in the missing middle, building affordable public housing).
The title of the article seems to insinuate some type of charity on the landlord’s part but it seems like it’s very clearly just business a transaction.
He said he was approached by several housing agencies asking if he would be willing to rent units to their clients and because of the promise of guaranteed rent and access to the city’s landlord damage fund, he agreed.
“When the agencies came to me and said the rents are guaranteed, that was a big selling point,” Dagenais said.
Right? This issue only exists because there’s someone with the goal of making money involved. If your goal is to help someone, then it doesn’t really matter that it’s costing a bit. Remove the financial consideration, and it’s a lot easier to stomach “a mentally challenged person vandalized some stuff, but they’re not living on the streets anymore and can actually start getting help”.
I agree, but a big part of whatever problems there are with this program is that the various agencies aren’t actually holding up their end of the bargain.
The program really should be primarily true social housing, not this public-private partnership, but the checks and balances should at least work.
Article claims about a 75% success rate, though success isn’t defined. But that means for a guy with 13 units, he’s basically guaranteed at least one failure (98% chance).
If failure means his place gets trashed with minimal support from the original agency due to understaffing or budget problems, then we need to reevaluate the setup, because that’s not a level of risk that seems fair.
I know people don’t like to see their tax dollars going towards people’s salary, but this sounds like a pretty good case for more social workers.
Why don’t we like that though? Social workers are great. They’re people we hire to do shit for people who need it. We do get value out of them and they often save us money or provide quite a bit of value
Typically most grants from the government come with strings attached. Those strings are typically a minimum amount of the money going directly to the people it helps.
In this case, that means going to pay the rent on these houses (or the subsidized amount), and setting some aside for the repairs to the program. I’d guess the way they’re worded would likely force the organizations to choose to either pay good wages, and keep good social workers, or skimp on the wages and get more bodies in seats, and in theory, more people helped. But paying poor wages means there are fewer good people to work for you, and you wind up in other troubles. Pay them too much, and a news article about cushy governmental jobs catches peoples eye and the program gets shuttered. Those strings are supposed to prevent massive bloat of admin/staffing costs that eat up all the cash without providing a full benefit for the people it should be helping. Which makes sense - its easy to see how funding without those strings could easily lead to poorer and poorer outcomes for those its supposed to help. The tricky part is finding the balance, and the way the article phrases it, it seems like there isn’t enough support for these people available.
The properties for sure are nasty, but remember that we’re trading nasty streets and nasty parks for an occasional nasty apartment. The one article quoted $8000 in one-time damage cleanup which is chump change in the scheme of things for someone owning a dozen units or more.
While I think the occasional trashed unit needs to be accepted to solve homelessness, cleanliness issues can be solved by having support monitors regularly check in and help tenants get into a habit of cleaning up after themselves and their guests.
They did eventually get around to mentioning in passing some of the reasons this particular program fails in some ways. It would have been a much better piece if they had started with the objective to compare and contrast programs that actually work (Medicine Hat, last time I looked) and those that don’t (this one, apparently).
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NW;DR (no writing; didn’t read)
But if there’s a link to an actual article instead of a youtube of people talking slowly, I’m in.
Added related article to description, thanks for making me find it
It really seems to me that municipalities simply don’t have the resources to support housing. Housing is a national problem and leaving it up to municipalities only creates perverse incentives to drive people experiencing homelessness out of your community into another, which isn’t doing anything to solve the underlying problem. We need a national housing first program, but this story demonstrates the importance of getting it right.
Governments should also be building public housing, like yesterday. People scapegoat landlords a lot but they are also subject to the laws of supply and demand. The only two levers the government has are to decrease demand (e.g. cracking down on short term rentals, stunting our economy by limiting population growth) and increasing supply (e.g. zoning in the missing middle, building affordable public housing).
The title of the article seems to insinuate some type of charity on the landlord’s part but it seems like it’s very clearly just business a transaction.
Imagine if the city/province just built housing, instead of bribing developers and landlords?
You know, like they used to before we had a housing crisis.
Right? This issue only exists because there’s someone with the goal of making money involved. If your goal is to help someone, then it doesn’t really matter that it’s costing a bit. Remove the financial consideration, and it’s a lot easier to stomach “a mentally challenged person vandalized some stuff, but they’re not living on the streets anymore and can actually start getting help”.
That would require a level of political leadership not seen in many decades. Would also help if people voted better.
I agree, but a big part of whatever problems there are with this program is that the various agencies aren’t actually holding up their end of the bargain.
The program really should be primarily true social housing, not this public-private partnership, but the checks and balances should at least work.
Article claims about a 75% success rate, though success isn’t defined. But that means for a guy with 13 units, he’s basically guaranteed at least one failure (98% chance).
If failure means his place gets trashed with minimal support from the original agency due to understaffing or budget problems, then we need to reevaluate the setup, because that’s not a level of risk that seems fair.
I know people don’t like to see their tax dollars going towards people’s salary, but this sounds like a pretty good case for more social workers.
Why don’t we like that though? Social workers are great. They’re people we hire to do shit for people who need it. We do get value out of them and they often save us money or provide quite a bit of value
Typically most grants from the government come with strings attached. Those strings are typically a minimum amount of the money going directly to the people it helps.
In this case, that means going to pay the rent on these houses (or the subsidized amount), and setting some aside for the repairs to the program. I’d guess the way they’re worded would likely force the organizations to choose to either pay good wages, and keep good social workers, or skimp on the wages and get more bodies in seats, and in theory, more people helped. But paying poor wages means there are fewer good people to work for you, and you wind up in other troubles. Pay them too much, and a news article about cushy governmental jobs catches peoples eye and the program gets shuttered. Those strings are supposed to prevent massive bloat of admin/staffing costs that eat up all the cash without providing a full benefit for the people it should be helping. Which makes sense - its easy to see how funding without those strings could easily lead to poorer and poorer outcomes for those its supposed to help. The tricky part is finding the balance, and the way the article phrases it, it seems like there isn’t enough support for these people available.
The properties for sure are nasty, but remember that we’re trading nasty streets and nasty parks for an occasional nasty apartment. The one article quoted $8000 in one-time damage cleanup which is chump change in the scheme of things for someone owning a dozen units or more.
While I think the occasional trashed unit needs to be accepted to solve homelessness, cleanliness issues can be solved by having support monitors regularly check in and help tenants get into a habit of cleaning up after themselves and their guests.
Yeah, even assholes who do such things deserve to live indoors
They did eventually get around to mentioning in passing some of the reasons this particular program fails in some ways. It would have been a much better piece if they had started with the objective to compare and contrast programs that actually work (Medicine Hat, last time I looked) and those that don’t (this one, apparently).