Housing advocates say systemic change needed to quell mounting N.L. crisis

Housing security advocates say without systemic changes to secure long-term housing solutions, an unprecedented homelessness crisis could be on the horizon for Newfoundland and Labrador.

The executive director of End Homelessness St. John's says current supports are not sufficient to secure housing for low-income earners and people on fixed incomes.

"What happens if they have to finish the winter out in the cold because they can no longer afford their bills?" Doug Pawson told CBC News on Monday. "Where do they turn?" 

Pawson said drastic changes in the housing market over the past eight months, compounded with rising costs of food and fuel, are making long-term housing increasingly inaccessible, and solutions currently in place like emergency shelters, he said, are not the long-term fixes people need.

"We need to think seriously about how we're going to give people more income, and it can't just be through tax credits," he said. "It's got to be through serious reform to our system." 

Housing vacancy rates dropped by more than half between 2020 and 2021, Pawson said, and fewer new builds being done since the start of the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem.

Pawson said one support measure — emergency shelters — is not available for families and doesn't provide a long-term solution to housing precariousness.

"It's cheaper and more efficient to support somebody with a $500 utility area to keep them housed than to spend $5,000 in emergency shelter systems with no desired outcome," he said.

With inflation consistently outpacing income growth rates, Pawson said, a basic income system may be the solution.

"When we think of poverty and those living on the margins, it's essentially an income problem, right?"

Paul Davis, executive director of the Gathering Place in St. John's, says the steady increase in demand seen at the community support centre over the past decade or so is proof access to food and housing is only becoming more precarious.

"There's no doubt there's an increased demand — not only for housing, but for vulnerable and marginalized citizens, those who struggle from day to day," he said.

Davis said the Gathering Place had 400 registered guests in 2014. By 2019, that number had more than doubled to 900. Three years later, more than 2,000 people are availing of the centre's services.

"All of them are people who are quite often precariously housed in less than ideal housing circumstances," he said. "So I think that's an indication of the growing number of people who find it challenging."