"In Canada, one in four homeowners owns multiple properties. To truly tackle the housing crisis, we desperately need more affordable, purpose-built supply."
Author: Kaite Burkholder Harris
“Policy is complicated. And it’s hard to engage with. But the consequences of this bill will be felt in a very visceral way should it move forward as proposed,” said Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, and one of the speakers at the event.
Reporter: Taylor Blewett
It’s the most consequential, far-reaching piece of housing legislation and regulatory change in Ontario in recent memory. And its contents threaten to undo years of work by affordable housing advocates and the cities who’ve acted in line with their calls to do more for renters and lower-income people facing a housing market hostile to their needs.
Reporter: Taylor Blewett
"If governments put their mind to it, they can definitely end the problem," said Meg McCallum, the executive director of Alliance To End Homelessness Ottawa. ""We have the solutions, this isn't rocket science, it's about creating policies that protect affordable housing, that create new affordable housing and preserve the quality of affordable housing."
Reporter: Sam Laprade
"There's so much potential there for the inclusion of housing that is deeply affordable and accessible, that includes housing with larger units sizes in all of these major developments." - Meg McCallum, Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, Interim Executive Director
"We're in a housing crisis and a municipally declared housing emergency. We need to throw everything we've got at this. If we actually intend to solve it and make a different, we need to use every tool we've got." -Sarah Button, Executive Director, CCOC
Reporter: Taylor Blewett
We know thousands of people in our community are going without meals in order to make ends meet. Food budgets are the easiest to cut back on. You can’t miss a monthly rent cheque or utility bill without severe consequences, so food is often the first thing to go. We are bordering on a health crisis in our city if we don’t demand action from our elected officials.
Author: Rachael Wilson, CEO, Ottawa Food Bank
Some of us may take the right to vote as a given, and it should be. At Shepherds of Good Hope, we do our best to ensure our service users and supportive housing residents across Ottawa have the supports they need to exercise their civic rights.
Author: Deirdre Freiheit, President & CEO, Shepherds of Good Hope
Meg McCallum, the executive director of Alliance To End Homelessness Ottawa, said that anyone can become homeless, and it's not a personal failure, it's a policy failure.
"Homelessness has not always been with us," she said.
McCallum noted that the Canadian government built and financed over one million low cost homes between 1944-1960 for returning servicemen and their families at a time when Canada's population was roughly 12 million people.
Reporter: Rob Snow
Meg McCallum, interim executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, told The Sam Laprade Show on Wednesday, Aug. 17, that the vacancy rate in Ottawa is 3.4 per cent, but this number is closer to zero for those living on a low income.
"If you are trying to make ends meet, and you're in a situation where you need to find new housing…do you stay in a bad relationship facing harassment and violence? Or do you choose the horrible choice of becoming homeless?" she said.
Reporter: Sam Laprade
The squeeze is especially hard on low-income families, said McCallum.
"There's almost a zero per cent vacancy rate for affordable homes," she said.
"For someone who's working a minimum wage job or living on a pension or Ontario Works or receiving Ontario disability support payments, trying to find something that you can afford is pretty much impossible."
Reporter: Safiyah Marhnouj
Something for the city to consider, said McCallum, is allowing cash contributions or the transfer or long-term leasing of assets to non-profit housing providers to satisfy inclusionary zoning requirements.
“That can also increase the chances that it will be permanently affordable,” said McCallum, pointing to the creation of an affordability “cliff” in the city’s proposed requirement that inclusionary zoning units stay affordable for 25 years for rentals and 99 for ownership."
Reporter: Taylor Blewitt
"Truthfully, the rents are already pretty high right now. Even if we control them at their current levels, there's a lot of people who aren't able to meet that monthly rent," McCallum said.
She says it's important to stop the loss of affordable units through so-called "renoviction" — when a landlord evicts a tenant for sometimes superficial renovations so they can raise rents — through tenant protections and landlord licensing.
Reporter: Matthew Kupfer
Kaite Burkholder Harris from the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa speaks about the "Starts With Home" campaign to urge City Council candidates to prioritize solving the housing and homelessness crisis.
Reporter: Derick Fage
"If we change how we view homelessness, we can end it. This isn't a pipedream. It's a proven strategy." - Kaite Burkholder Harris
Reporter: Dahlia Kurtz
"We've created this crisis, we can actually create the solution and we know what the solutions are." - Kaite Burkholder Harris
Reporter: Perushka Gopalkista
Reporter: Sam Laprade