Gov't needs to step it up and improve Aboriginal housing

Housing for Aboriginal people in Canadian cities is in need of much improvement, and governments need to do more to address the crisis, according to a new study.
Ryan Walker, an assistant professor of planning and geography at the University of Saskatchewan, outlines the problem in his report, "Social Housing and the Role of Aboriginal Organizations in Canadian Cities," released in May as part of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) Aboriginal Quality of Life series.
Walker began assembling the research for this report last summer, but his interest in the area has been ongoing for nearly a decade. He's done comparative work with Indigenous housing in New Zealand and Australia, and has been interested in urban planning with Aboriginal communities.
For this study, Walker looked at the quality of Aboriginal housing in various cities across the country, including Winnipeg, Vancouver and urban areas in Quebec and Saskatchewan.
Walker said that the conclusion of the major statistical findings wasn't surprising, but the extent of it was. For example, in Regina and Prince Albert, the 14 per cent of all Aboriginal households lived in places in need of major repair (defective plumbing or electrical systems, structural problems, etc.), compared to seven percent of households in the non-Aboriginal population. In Vancouver, the same numbers were 15 per cent to six per cent, and in Edmonton 14 per cent versus five per cent.
In regard to affordability, 50 per cent of Aboriginal households in Saskatoon paid greater than 30 per cent of their income toward housing compared to 38 per cent of the non-Aboriginal population.
Walker noted these figures were from 2001, and since then Saskatchewan has witnessed a housing boom and affordability crisis likely to exacerbate the situation.
The per cent of the Aboriginal population in overcrowded living spaces was nine percent in Saskatoon and Regina and 11 per cent in Prince Albert, compared to one per cent of the non-Aboriginal population living in overcrowded homes in those same cities. Numbers were similar in most cities he looked at.
"It certainly wasn't surprising to me that housing hardship, if you want to call it that, is felt often most acutely among Aboriginal people living in cities," he said. "Many are also doing quite well of course. But when we talk about social housing and those least able to cope with housing markets that tend to be accelerating and introducing new affordability challenges, no matter how you carve up the data, if you ever add a dimension to your analysis that looks at whether or not people have Aboriginal ancestry or not, what you'll consistently find is that in that hard-pressed area of the market you find a disproportionate number of Aboriginal households."
Walker also looked in detail at four Aboriginal housing organizations and the solutions they have developed to address the housing crisis.
His work shows that, generally, the need is greater when the demographic of Aboriginal ancestry is added to the equation - his logical conclusion is that the greater the need, the greater the resources that should be allocated to addressing it.
He is convinced that such Aboriginal housing organizations as those he studied in various cities for his study have the decades of experience and know-how to manage housing for their people correctly. The housing provided by these organizations is also connected to positive outcomes in other sectors, Walker found.
"An investment in good, stable, culturally appropriate Aboriginal housing is also an investment in other sectors like health, employment, community stability, education and so forth," he said, noting that Aboriginal housings organizations know that and know how to provide that housing effectively, designing, building, acquiring and managing development in a culturally appropriate way along with a range of other services.
All that's missing is more money, which would ideally be guaranteed to come regularly (to facilitate sustainability) and allocated in clearly articulated, goal-oriented ways. Ideally, annual targets for the number of units built (historically, one program in the 1980s committed 1,000 units to be built annually in urban areas across the country), renovated or otherwise made available would be set by upper levels of government and funded through government partnerships and administered by partnerships with the Aboriginal housing organizations.
"What seems to be lacking is a sustained financial commitment from the federal government, but the federal government often partners with provincial governments when it invests in housing, so you could say both levels of government," Walker said. "There's just a lack of any real concerted effort here to provide the things that these corporations can't provide for themselves, which is a redistribution through the income tax system to pay for social services."

Part of the problem is that governments today tend to prefer short-term commitments and avoid locking themselves into long-term commitments, Walker said. Governments also like to have initiatives to announce once every year or two, rather than putting in place a long-term strategy, he added.
The funding needs to come every year so organizations can plan for that - the capacity is there, but some organizations currently spend years raising enough money to build a handful of units, Walker said.
"In one year you're not going to solve all the housing problems, but what you could do is create that reliable space in the budget to keep taking chunks out of it annually," he said. "And people can plan for that."
Another part of the problem is that the government jurisdiction in this area isn't clear - the debate over it is also not new. Walker noted that his research led him to transcripts of cabinet briefings and reports from the late 1960s and early 1970s when the federal government was involved in large-scale housing programs.
"The sense back then was a bit of a grey area," Walker said. "If anything, the case could be made either way, and it was really a question of who was going to step up and demonstrate leadership in the sector."
At that time, the lead was taken by the federal government, and the provinces followed close behind in partnership. The federal government significantly reduced funding for social housing in the 1990s. Walker calls the government's "recent re-entry into low-cost housing unsatisfactory and lacking necessary funding, clearly articulated goals and a long-term commitment."
Walker believes the federal government needs to step up to the plate again today, as it has history in the housing sector the best capacity to mobilize policy interest in a field, and bring partners aboard. He notes the provinces still by and large won't take leadership roles in Aboriginal-specific programming, though the federal government tends to find the line of its responsibility toward Aboriginal people blurring off-reserve.
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada's national housing agency, did not return calls for comment.
Walker said he remains optimistic, noting that he has seen success on similar issues in other countries.
Walker's work was produced under the direction of F. Leslie Seidle, a senior research associate IRPP responsible for the Aboriginal Quality of Life series.
"The gaps in life conditions on virtually every measure are huge between most Aboriginal people and the Canadian average," Seidle said of the series. "And personally I find that totally unacceptable. Change starts somewhere and change often starts small. I firmly believe that in the case of the quality of life of Aboriginal people, it also has to be change that they have a major role in initiating themselves and it has to be culturally sensitive and it has to take account of our history and our constitutional arrangements and so on."
With regards to the issues raised by Walker's study, and the broader issues, Seidle agreed that governments need to take initiative.
"What it takes is political will," he said. "The processes and the means can be found. We need to think of these things more holistically. Housing has an impact on so many other things."
The IRPP is an independent, national, non-profit organization, seeking to improve public policy by generating research, providing insight and sparking debate.
The organization is funded almost entirely by the investment on an endowment provided in the early 1970s by the federal government, all provincial governments but on,e and a number of businesses, allowing it to remain independent, Seidle explained.