Families, newcomers seeking shelter now more than ever

As the City of Ottawa takes stock of its homelessness crisis andforms a new 10-year housing strategy, one of the most alarming trends that's emerging is the rapid rise in the number of families seeking shelterin motels.

On a given night, 350 families are placed in motel rooms paid for by the city, some of them staying there for months at a time. There are four times the number of chronically homeless families now than there were just six years ago, city staff say.

"It's a key area for us to focus on," said the city's housing director, Shelley VanBuskirk. "A hotel room is no place to raise a family."

• No vacancy: More families placed in hotels as demand for shelter surges
• Ottawa's hidden homeless

On Thursday, the city's community and protective services committee approved an updated plan for tackling that problem, and the wider issues of homelessness and affordable housing, over the next decade. The goal of the strategy is to reduce homelessness in Ottawa by 25 per cent.

City staff are calling it a "roadmap" to steer Ottawa away from the housing emergency declared by councilin January, the first major update to its housing strategy since2014. The city will also helpIndigenous groups come up with a 10-year strategy of their own.

While the number of individual men, women and youth using shelters has decreased slightly in recent years, significantly more families and newcomers are relying on them.

VanBuskirksaid the increase in newcomers using shelters isdue largelytorefugee claimants crossing into Canada from the United States in recent years.

"The face of our shelters is changing," VanBuskirksaid.

Range of options

Ottawa has been experimenting withvarious policy changesto move people into permanent housing, staff told the committee.

Ottawa set aside $15 million in its 2020 budget for new living units. Two-thirds of that is earmarked for Ottawa Community Housing, while $2 million is reserved for preparingcity-owned siteson HeatheringtonRoad and at LeBreton Flats for affordable housing. The rest couldgo toward buying a hotel that canbe converted into more stable housing.

• City mulls hotel purchase to house homeless during pandemic and beyond

Meanwhile, city planning staff are working onhow to require builders to include affordable housingnear LRTstations, something called inclusionary zoning. Aproposed bylaw will come next year with the new official plan.

The 10-year housing strategy also suggested exploring a community-owned land trust, which seesland acquired and preservedfor affordable housing. Housing liaison Coun. Catherine McKenney floated the idea of using a $7.5-million contribution from atower project at 900 Albert St. for such a cause.

$1B needed

Anotherworrying trend is the dramatic rise in rent, which rose to an average of $1,302 per month in 2019. That has some groups urgingthe city to maintain as many units as possible within non-profit,publicly owned buildings.

"We can't build our way out of this crisis if we are not also going to ensure that housing costs are remained at an affordable level," said Kaite Burkholder Harris of the Alliance to End Homelessness of Ottawa.

Over the coming decade, the city is aimingto create300 to 570new units per year at a cost of $60 million per year, two-thirds of which it hopes will come from thefederal and Ontario governments. The city isalso callingforan extra$38 million per year from those upper levels of governments forsubsidies,supportive housing and other operating costs.

Beyond that, the citysays $45 million in one-time funding, shared among allthree levels of government, would help move families out of motels.

That brings thetotal cost of the city's 10-year housing strategy to more than $1 billion.

It's a tall order, and city staff acknowledge funding fromupper levels of government is unpredictable. Currently, municipal property taxpayers cover more than half the costof building and running housing programs.

"It is ambitious. We are not going to succeed without funding from other levels of government, but we have a moral, ethical and legal obligation to people who are not housed in this city to house them," McKenneysaid.

The 10-year plan goes to city council for approval on July 15.