Homeless in your own homeland

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A feeling of bitter irony grows in many Indigenous people when people opposed to the ratification of the Nisga'a agreement use the politically- and emotionally-charged word "homeland" to illustrate their objections to the first modern-day treaty to be negotiated in the province of British Columbia.

Those opponents say the precedent set by the Nisga'a's limited self government agreement will create the Canadian equivalent of homelands - the black ghettos of South Africa's apartheid era.

While not for a minute endorsing that point of view, some Native people, both on and off reserve, wonder how bad it can be to have a homeland in a land where - right now - they can't find homes.

It's a problem that has been growing all across the country in recent years after the federal government, and many provincial governments, gave in to the deficit-cutting mania created by the business and financial sectors. They've moved to cut costs by eliminating, off-loading, or reducing, social programs and made it harder to obtain unemployment insurance and welfare.

Toronto city councillor Jack Layton endorsed a call by a city grassroots group - the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee - for the federal government to declare the situation faced by homeless people to be a national emergency on the same scale as the ice-storm which struck Eastern Canada last January.

That demand has already been unanimously endorsed by Toronto city council's Neighborhood and Community Services committee and was expected to be passed by the whole council on Oct. 28 (after Windspeaker's deadline).

Peter Zimmerman, a member of Layton's staff, is monitoring Toronto's housing woes. He told Windspeaker that the homeless problem in the city has gotten dramatically worse in the three years since the pro-business Progressive Conservative Mike Harris government was elected.

"The mayor's task force on homelessness issued a report saying that during the last three years there has been a decrease in welfare payments and a decrease in the number of people eligible for assistance. Combine that with the fact that the rents are going up in Toronto and there's been little new affordable housing built and it leads to more and more people being pushed out into the streets," he said.

Last year, Ottawa freed up just over $300 million (approximately the same amount set aside to establish the Aboriginal Healing Foundation at approximately the same time) to provide relief to people who found themselves without power when the ice felled power lines all over western Quebec and parts of Ontario. With winter approaching, that kind of money would be a great help to the tens of thousands of homeless people in Canada's cities.

Cathy Crowe is the spokesperson for the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. She has worked as a street nurse through the Queen West Community Health Centre for the past 10 years, providing medical care to homeless people. She said her organization has attracted the support of 250 organizations and 500 individuals without any major initiatives to publicize its activities.

"Last year, I was watching the coverage of the ice storm on TV and I thought about going there to help," she said. "Then I thought, 'That's ridiculous. That's what I'm doing here.'"

Having made the connection between one well-publicized natural disaster where there was considerable pressure from the public for the government to do something for the victims, and the homelessness crisis, which she considers to be a man-made or government policy-made disaster, Crowe started up the committee and has been delighted with the momentum it's gained.

"Two years ago, I was involved in the Freezing Deaths Inquest here and now, two years later, nothing has been done," she said. "Right now, two to four people per week are dying in the streets of Toronto and half of those people are Aboriginal. It's very, very obvious that First Nations people are dying in proportions that aren't right and our committee wantsto show the government that people aren't tolerating this any longer."

The committee has called on Ottawa to establish a national housing policy and stable long-term funding for social housing.

"We've researched and discovered that all levels of government spend about one per cent of their budgets on affordable housing. We've recommended that all governments raise that total to two per cent which we believe will be enough," she said. "The federal government can do what we're asking under the Emergency Planning Act which says that federal funds can help at the local level in the event of war, to maintain public order or to protect the public welfare. This is a man-made problem and we have the means to solve it if the political will is there."

Margaret Ward, a member of the Sawridge band in northern Alberta, has been living with her three young children in a $1,000 a month motel room in south Edmonton for more than two months. She's awaiting the outcome of a court claim against the wealthy band which is refusing to accept her as a member despite the fact that she claims to be the niece of the former longtime Sawridge chief, the late Senator Walter Twinn.

Ward said she can't get housing at home and, since moving to Edmonton, is finding it impossible to get a rental unit in the city.

"Every place I've looked at . . . when I talk to them on the phone, everything's OK. But, when I go there in person, the place has 'just been rented,'" she said. "One woman even actually said to me that I sounded white on the phone."

There's no doubt in her mind that the reason for that is racism. It's a problem Aboriginal people encounter that makes the existing housing problems that much worse.

The urgency of the situation was underlined when a Department of Indian Affairs study was made public in early October. By considering the data computed for the United Nations' human development index - a ranking in which Canada has led the world for the last six years - and treating on and ff reserve Aboriginal populations as separate entities, a startling fact emerged. Canada as a whole may be number one, but off reserve conditions ranked 34th (just ahead of Trinidad and Tobago) and on reserve conditions ranked 63rd (just ahead of Brazil).

Mel Buffalo is the president of the National Aboriginal Housing Association. He says the federal government, instead of recognizing that there is a growing housing problem and taking steps to deal with it, is off-loading responsibility for housing to the provinces.

"Only Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have not accepted off-loading of housing," he said. "The federal government calls it devolution. We call it abandonment."

Buffalo said the problem is already at crisis proportions and is worsening rapidly.

"There are 1,000 families waiting for housing just in the city of Edmonton," he said. "And that stat is misleading because many of the families that have some sort of housing are living with three or four families in a one or two bedroom apartment because there just isn't enough quality affordable housing. Every time the minister of Indian Affairs speaks, she says housing or economic development is the number one problem. So what are they doing about it?"

Native people leave their home communities because the waiting lists for housing are long. But when they move to the city, they find it just as bad. With economic conditions so bad on First Nation territories, 70 per cent of the Aboriginal population now lives off reserve. The federal government has maintained its focus on reserve, Buffalo said, effectively abandoning 70 per cent of its fiduciary obligation to Native peoples to provincial and municipal governments.

"The government inaction is creating real ghettos," he said. "It's really creating a situation like New York or L.A. and the government's closing its eyes and shutting its ears."

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples' report urged action on housing. Buffalo said Ottawa has ignoed the report.

"We've told the minister that a two per cent increase in her department's annual budget that's put towards housing over the next 20 years will address the problem," he said.

Marilyn Buffalo, president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, said the housing problem is especially hard on women and children.

"Women are leaving the reserves because of the lack of housing and educational services and that's not right," she said. "One of our sacred rights as First Nations people is the right to reside on our own territories. No one should be denied that right."

She blames the federal government for not providing adequate funding to allow the construction of enough decent housing on reserves. Since that's Ottawa's fault, she reasons Ottawa should be held responsible for off reserve housing woes as well.

All five national Aboriginal organizations have targeted the housing problem as a priority and are making plans to lobby Ottawa for action. In Finance Minister Paul Martin's latest speech on government spending in early October, there was no mention of the problem, leaving Native leaders little reason to hope anything will be accomplished without drastic action.