‘Band-Aid approaches’

Dear Editor:

RE: Eighty-five thousand souls, Jan. 29.

Dave Adsett’s editorial outlines Ontario’s homeless situation that stares us in the face every day.  He identifies some elements which may have contributed to this situation, and he proposes how we might alleviate it.

Notice that all of what Adsett highlights is dealing with the tragedy of homeless as it confronts us now; in other words, Band-Aid approaches. Although this is now crucially important in order to eliminate the daily suffering that individuals experience, this only deals with the back-end of the issue.  An equally, if not more crucially, way to approach this issue is to focus on prevention, especially in the context of Adsett’s statement about who the public votes for every four years. I believe we are in this situation due in large part exactly because of how the majority have historically voted, especially in conservatively minded electoral districts such as ours.

Recall the “common sense revolution” of Mike Harris where cuts cancelled funding for 17,000 units of non-profit and co-operative housing. Also, recall 1998 when the province transferred funding responsibilities for social housing to municipalities. This shifted the burden to local property tax bases which were insufficient to fund large-scale housing projects, making Ontario the only province to incorporate this structure. 

The Social Housing Reform Act of 2000 formalized the downloading process, requiring dozens of municipal service managers to assume permanent responsibility for housing programs. Next, recall Harris’ closure of psychiatric hospitals intended to transition patients to community-based care, which created a perfect storm for municipalities because community resources were never sufficiently funded to replace the lost beds.

And most recently, recall that the Ford government implemented rent control exemptions for units built after 2018, which has contributed to escalating market rents.

I hope Wellington Advertiser readers can understand that societal issues, such as those that Adsett drew our attention to in his last editorial, are largely the result of decisions that we make at the voting booth.  

As Adsett encourages, let us be the “local champions” to elect “politicians with a backbone,” but let us do it to prevent homelessness so we don’t have to deal with the individual trauma when it stares us in the face like it is doing now in the dead of this kind of winter.

David Fast,
Ariss