Ontario homelessness funding decision met by challenge by mayor, discussion at council Wednesday
Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen
Published Apr 26, 2023 • Last updated 10 hours ago • 5 minute read
Ottawa will receive just 0.4 per cent of new provincial funding for homelessness and supportive housing programs, destined for municipalities around Ontario.
It’s a decision Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is challenging on fairness grounds, and one that city staff are warning will hinder Ottawa’s ability to support people experiencing homelessness. Local supportive housing providers and advocates have expressed shock and outrage.
The provincial position, meanwhile, is that its new approach to handing out these funds reflects an important correction. A past formula saw some cities — Ottawa included — receive a larger share of funding than other places that needed it more, according to the office of Housing Minister Steve Clark.
In an unusual move, and at the request of the mayor’s office, a staff analysis of the funding decision has been added to the agenda for Wednesday’s council meeting. Councillors will be able to ask questions, and opine publicly on a decision that the mayor has also directly requested the governing Progressive Conservatives revisit.
The background
The province is the funding source for more than two-thirds of city spending on homelessness
In 2022, Ontario consolidated three separate funding streams into a single new one, called the Homelessness Prevention Program. Ottawa’s allocation in that first year rose $1.5 million from the previous level of l $47.6 million.
Then came the 2023 provincial budget, and the news the governing PCs were injecting another $190.5 million annually, provincewide, into the Homelessness Prevention Program.
Ottawa’s share of the new HPP funding was just $845,100 in extra money annually, for a total of $48.5 million every year between 2023 and 2026. That money funds street outreach, emergency shelter for residents, the operation of supportive housing, and other city investments.
Staff write in their report to council that other cities are getting bigger bumps, on both a per-capita basis and when calculated as a percentage of existing funding.
After being informed of Ottawa’s funding total, “staff immediately began to inquire about the rationale for the confirmed allocation amount,” the report states.
The formula in question
According to Housing Minister Steve Clark, the province is relying on a new model for distributing HPP dollars across the province.
As of the writing of their report to council, published Tuesday, city staff said they had been “unable to obtain satisfactory clarification from the province on how the funding formula was utilized to calculate each municipality’s allocation, including Ottawa’s amount.”
Victoria Podbielski, a spokesperson for Municipal Affairs and the housing minister, told this newspaper via email Tuesday that the updated formula “is based on a community’s share of homelessness, supportive housing units, low-income households, households in deep core housing need (as defined by CMHC), and Indigenous and youth populations.”
According to the minister’s office, it was developed “based on feedback from the auditor general and municipal stakeholders who were clear that the previous model was not transparent and didn’t accurately reflect measures of local need.
“Under the previous model some municipalities, like Ottawa, received disproportionately higher funding than other municipalities with higher determined need.”
City staff, meanwhile, say they are “not aware of any consultation process that would have occurred across the province.”
Toronto is to receive a $48-million share of the additional funding, according to staff. The disparity between this total, and the allocation to Ottawa – the province’s second-largest city – has been challenged by the mayor, including in a letter he sent Monday to Clark and Premier Doug Ford.
“I don’t understand any logic that would dictate that … Toronto would get 60 times as much as Ottawa, that the issue of homelessness in Toronto is 60 times what it is in Ottawa, doesn’t resonate in any way with me,” Sutcliffe said in a Tuesday interview.
The impact
Perhaps the most dire claim in the staff report on the province’s decision is that, immediately, it will “see 150 households without shelter every night,” and this figure will continue to climb.
Traditionally, the city’s position has been to provide an emergency shelter option to anyone who found themselves without a roof over their heads.
Ottawa’s Housing Services branch is now looking at a budget pressure of $37 million, according to staff — $17 million short of what’s required to operate “at current service levels” next year, and without $20 million needed on the capital side “to support our proposed strategies to transition out of recreational facilities and invest in longer term options to meet the current and future housing needs of people experiencing homelessness.”
The city previously had access to pandemic-era provincial funding, since ended, which it used to set up shelter beds in “physical distancing centres” at city rec facilities.
Staff, in their report, draw a direct link between the current money available from the province, and the city’s ability to deliver on the goals on its 10-year housing and homelessness plan, which is based on funding from all three levels of government.
These includes the creation of 570 to 850 affordable or supportive housing units every year between 2020 and 2030 — a target the city already hasn’t been able to meet, CBC Ottawa reported in February — with at least 10 per cent of those units being in the supportive category.
“The lack of provincial funding may require the scaling back of efforts to support all individuals experiencing homelessness,” staff write. “The city’s overall ability to respond to homelessness in the community will remain stagnant as service demands and operating costs increase.”
The city hall response
Sutcliffe said he felt he had no choice but to go public about the funding matter, after previous engagement at the provincial level — including on phone calls with the premier, and at a meeting with cabinet members — failed to produce any movement on their side.
The mayor said Wednesday’s briefing is mainly to give councillors an opportunity to ask questions and further their own understanding of the situation, in the wake of the news about Ottawa’s funding amount. But it’s also “a way of drawing attention to the consequences of this allocation.”
As for the city’s side of the housing-and-homelessness investment equation — there was some bristling at budget time, for instance, that the city’s own $15-million capital commitment to affordable housing has been largely static for years — Sutcliffe said the municipality does needs to spend more going forward, but also up its work on alternative contributions to housing creation, such as city land.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...ncil-wednesday
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