4 faces of homelessness: Kurtis - the price of homelessness

The common room at Shelter House in Thunder Bay, Ont., looks a bit like a hospital waiting room.

It's got plain white walls and no carpet and there's very little furniture: just a single computer work station and chairs around the room's perimeter.

On any given morning, there might be a half-dozen to a dozen people spending time there, mostly sitting down, keeping to themselves.

Some don't look well.

Every person in Shelter House has a story about how they ended up there.

This one belongs to Kurtis Peters.

Kurtis's story

Peters grew up in Winnipeg and said he started selling drugs when he was eight.

Around three years ago, he said he and his partner moved to Muskrat Dam First Nation to escape the crystal meth scene in the Manitoba capital and try to get clean which they did, for about eight months.

They came to Thunder Bay, he said, in part because he needed medical treatment.

But they moved into an apartment near Victoriaville Mall in the city's downtown south core.

Beforelong, he said, poverty drove him to relapse.

"There isn't a lot of programs for people with not a lot of money," Peters said.

"We would get welfare," he continued. "We would have to pay all of it, even the money that was supposed to be for food, for rent, plus some of our child tax, and then pay bills out of the child tax and then pay food out of the child tax and then be left with pretty well nothing for the kids to go play or anything."

"They would become bored. They would terrorize the wife [They're] just triggers, and [drugs are] just very accessible."

By February of this year, Peters and his partner could no longer afford their rent, he said, so they voluntarily surrendered their five children to Dilico Anishinabek Family Care for temporary foster care and moved into a cheap hotel.

Once tourist season arrived and the room rates became less affordable, they began bouncing between hotels and Shelter House.

They'd been in the shelter for about a month, Peters told CBC News during an interview in late September, and they did get clean again.

Peters isn't even on the social housing wait list yet, he said, because he's still gathering the necessary paperwork.

Once he's on it, he'll join approximately 1,000 people who wait up to nine months or more for a home.

It's hard being in limbo, he said.

"We see our kids all the time," Peters continued, his voice quivering. "Like, my son is eight, and he asks every time, 'when are we going to come home, daddy? When are we going to come home?'"

"We have no answer for him."

Shelter costs more than housing

The most recent point-in-time count in Thunder Bay counted 474 homeless individuals in a 24-hour period.

That's up from less than 300 two years ago.

• Thunder Bay homelessness count surveys nearly 500 people in 24 hours

About a quarter of them were living in emergency shelters.

The 62-bed Shelter House, whose annual operating budget exceeds $2 million, estimates that its service costs $65-per-person, per-night, according to its website, meaning it costs $3,900 per-month for Peters and his wife to stay there.

That's substantially more than it would cost to rent them an apartment.

But the Thunder Bay District Social Services Administration Board (DSSAB) can't simply move all homeless people into houses, in part because of a capacity issue, said Ken Ranta, the director of the DSSAB'shousing services division.

"At the end of the day, the City of Thunder Bay does not have, at least not that I'm aware of, 500 vacant housing units available today," he said.

"Or we don't have private landlords who are interested in, or willing to, I'm going to say, take that chance and rent to an individual who may be receiving supports."

Creating new social housing units to meet the demand costs at least $150,000 per-unit, Ranta said, putting the cost of building 474 homes at just over $71 million and that doesn't include operating costs.

Mostfunding for new housing comes from federal and provincial programs the quantity, nature and value of which varysubstantially from administration to administration.

The only stable funding that can be used for new units is money paid to the DSSAB by the municipalitiesand unorganized territoriesin the Thunder Bay district.

This year, the total municipal levy for all social services shared between the municipalities and territories is just over $22 million;$16 million of that is used for housing, according to the DSSAB's2018 budget.

Most of that $16 million, however, helps pay the annual operating costs of the existing 2,490housing units the services board owns. The money also helpssupport929 units operated by non-profit housing providers in the city, and it helps pay for rent supplements on more than 600 units owned by private landlords.

A small portion is also transferred to the DSSAB'scapital replacement reserve fund currently valued at around $10 million, according to Ranta which is earmarked, not just for new units, but also for major repairs to existing ones.

None of it adds up toenough moneyto address the city's housing needs, said outgoing city councillor and DSSAB board member Paul Pugh, who added that he believes building 100 new units would be a responsible first target for the city, if money allowed.

But the DDSAB's board isn't in a position to raise the municipal levy to cover those kinds of costs Pugh said.

"That's partly politics," he said. "The members of the board have to answer to the members of their councils."

"But it's also partly the economics of the whole issue of municipalities only getting between eightand ninecents of [all of] the tax dollars [that individuals pay in total]. Municipalities just don't have the money. We don't have it."

The DSSAB's capital reserve fundcan be tapped to leveragefederal or provincial funding for housing, Pugh continued, but without support from other levels of government, "not much gets done."

"None of the other things are going to be dealt with until the money question is addressed, and that relates to the whole question of how municipalities are funded," Pugh said, pointing to the current system of property taxation, which he called "outdated."

'We cannot meet the social needs that we're faced with'

"Every municipality is on the verge of bankruptcy because of that inadequate funding ... not in the literal sense that, at the end of the year, Thunder Bay is going to go bankrupt, we're not," Pugh said. "Bankrupt in the social sense that we cannot meet the social needs that we're faced with."

Another barrier to municipalities addressing homelessness is the DSSAB structure, Pugh said.

In northern Ontario, the province mandates social services administration boards to build and manage housing for their regions.

The municipalities in the regions transfer funds to the boards to pay for social services, he noted, but they're one step removed from controlling what happens to that money.

"I think it needs to be considerably revised," Pugh said. "I think that putting in a city like Thunder Bay with a number of municipalities that have very different needs is a formula for problems because the issues in Thunder Bay are quite different from the issues in smaller communities."

CBC News took Pugh's concerns to the provincial government.

The province responds

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said Thunder Bay is receiving nearly $3.3 million this fiscal year through the Community Homelessness Prevention Program, as well as$2 million under the Investment in Affordable Housing Program and$827,000 fromthe Social Infrastructure Fund.

Those initiatives were established under the previous Liberal government.

The ministry said it would not comment on Pugh's concerns about the nature of municipal funding but said it provides support to municipalities through theOntario Municipal Partnership Fund.

A spokesperson said she referred CBC's request for commentabout the DSSABstructure to theMinistry of Children, Community and Social Services.

However that ministry did not provide a response.