One of the most commonly asked questions I have addressed in the past year is: “We see so much homelessness in our community—how can we help?” To understand how we can help, it’s important to first understand a bit about how we try to move people who are homeless out of shelters and into housing. One way to visualize housing is on a continuum—the way that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has done. In this visual, you can picture a community with a range of different types of housing.
Emergency Shelter: Someone might stay here anywhere from a few nights to a few months. There might be food and some supports, but that isn’t guaranteed.
Transitional Housing: This housing is designed to be short-term and often includes programs to teach life skills to tenants to help them learn how to live independently. For instance, they might learn to shop for food, cook and pay bills. There may be programs to help with mental health and addictions support. Usually within a year, they are ready—and they are expected to move into more permanent housing, such as Supportive Housing, Community Housing or Affordable Housing.
Supportive Housing: This type of housing comes with many supports—it could include meal service, personal support workers, cleaning staff, and even nursing and some medical care. These extra supports help someone live independently if they have mobility issues, serious mental health concerns or medical needs, and are offered directly by the building.
Community Housing: Sometimes called Social Housing or Subsidized Housing, these are homes where tenants only pay a very small amount of rent. They need to be able to live independently, but often will qualify for community services, who come to their home to provide meals, cleaning, and personal or nursing care.
Affordable Housing: Your housing is affordable if you pay less than 30% of your before-tax income. This could be through renting, or through a rent-to-own or an affordable home ownership program.
Market Housing: Housing sale prices and rents are decided by the building’s owners at any price they want.
In a healthy community, someone who is homeless or in an emergency shelter, can move along the continuum over time, and find themselves in a permanent home. Let’s take “Gerry” as an example. Gerry finds himself in an emergency shelter—he should be able to eventually move into permanent housing in a few weeks or months. If he needs a lot of supports, it might be supportive housing, or if he can live independently, he could move into community housing. If he has a job he might even be able to move into an apartment that he can afford, and eventually, he might get married and he and his wife might qualify for an affordable home ownership program. Every time Gerry moves along the continuum, it opens up a place for someone else behind him. This is called “Housing Flow.”
In communities across Canada, there isn’t enough affordable housing for people like Gerry to move to. In fact, there’s not enough community housing or supportive housing, either. So instead of staying in a shelter for a few weeks or months, Gerry spends years in a shelter. The people who are supposed to stay for less than a year in transitional housing don’t have anywhere to go, either. People who have mobility devices are living in apartments not designed for them to move about safely or freely. People who need extra supports are struggling in apartments they can’t clean, and don’t have a way to make themselves meals. The system gets stuck, and there is no more “Housing Flow.”
So what can be done? We need to open up that system and build more housing. We need to build lots of it, and we need to build all kinds of different housing. The more types of housing a community has, the more ways we can lift people up out of poverty, so that they can live in dignity, in a place where they are proud to call home.
A Presbyterian response to the housing crisis
Churches have always sought to provide care and sanctuary for those in need. Before Canada had a social safety net, Presbyterians understood that everyone was deserving of food, shelter, love and dignity, and opened their doors to those in need. And when it became clear that food and clothing weren’t enough, Presbyterians started to build. They built housing through Presbyterian missions like Evangel Hall in Toronto, which provides 130 subsidized apartments with supports to people who come from the shelter system. Presbyterians built housing on church land as a way to create affordable places for people to live, while generating revenue to help sustain their congregation. They built housing for seniors, housing for families, housing for people of all incomes.
With the impact of the pandemic, inflation and the costs of repairs, many congregations are looking at their properties and considering their options. We have the opportunity to build again, and change the course of the housing crisis in Canada.
Governments at all levels are creating incentives to help make building financially affordable. Most building projects involve a mix of market rent—high (monthly revenue to pay for the mortgage) and affordable (to create housing for low-income and middle-income tenants). Designing planning and accessing capital to build new housing is easier than it has ever been, and more churches and charities are taking on building projects than we’ve seen in many decades. There are more nonprofit developers—charities and nonprofits with project managers—who are putting the interests of the church and the community first.
So how does one begin to imagine what a project could look like? Here are some questions to start with:
- What can be done on our land? Local zoning rules heritage status and land size will shape how high and wide a building can be and that can decide what type of project is best for that site and whether development is affordable. Some properties might be perfect for low-rise, affordable home ownership (think condos and townhouses), others might be great for 60–100 apartments at 5, 6 or 7 stories. Churches can get high-level feasibility assessments done quickly and for a reasonable cost.
- What does the neighbourhood need? What can it offer? If a location is close to health centres, pharmacies and groceries, it might be a great fit for seniors’ housing. If the area is lacking in community space for dance and music classes, sports and fitness and events, there might be political support and additional funding to build recreational facilities that can be used by the community. Some communities have a shortage of places for families to live, and need 2–3 bedroom apartments.
- What does the congregation need? What can it manage? How much space for the sanctuary and offices is necessary and can it be made multi-purpose? Renting out community and event space can require event planning and business management skills; managing tenants requires property management and other skills. Would the congregation want to manage it internally or outsource it? Or perhaps it wants to partner with a charity to manage and support tenants.
- What kind of legacy does the congregation want to leave? Creating affordable housing—whether it be places to rent or to own whether it be for seniors or for families—will prevent and reduce homelessness.
For more information about the housing crisis and strategies for building, Ainsley Chapman can be reached at Evangel Hall at ainsley.chapman@evangelhall.ca or 416-504-3563 ext. 227.
By Ainsley Chapman Executive Director of Evangel Hall Mission, a multi-service homelessness and social housing agency in Toronto, and a mission of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Ainsley has been working with the City of Toronto, and a coalition of housing providers on a housing strategy to reduce homelessness.