Earlier this week I wrote about the recent report by The Trillium, which cited government documents obtained by that news organization. According to The Trillium, the government's own internal data suggests that the province's homeless population is now just shy of a quarter million. Not all of them are on the streets — most of them aren't. But a great many are, and that number seems to be increasing.
Speaking for the Ontario Big Cities Mayors group two weeks ago, Burlington mayor Marianne Meed Ward asked the province to create a ministry to oversee and address homelessness in Ontario. “This is a health issue, this is a housing issue, and it’s a humanitarian issue,” the mayor said. She said the money allotted to address the problem hasn't been consistent enough. Or, frankly, enough. Period. More is needed.
Sure. But more ministers? Not so fast.
I don't think Meed Ward’s claim about the urgency of this problem is in any way controversial. This is a problem that is getting worse. Though we don't do a good enough job tracking this (or basically anything) we can all see plain as day that homelessness is getting worse. Seeing homeless people in Toronto isn't new, but the problem is visibly spreading out into areas of the city where it was once essentially unheard of. Friends and family in smaller cities and towns across Ontario say much the same thing — it's either visibly worse or visible at all for the first time. People are living in tents or alleys in communities with no prior experience with visible homelessness.
So I'm certainly all aboard with Meed Ward's concerns. But the specific suggestion of a minister of homelessness? I'm not sure the lack of ministers is the problem. I think what we really need is more accountability from the civic leaders (at various orders of government) that we already have.
To be clear, I'm not adamantly opposed to the idea of a homelessness minister. If someone can make a compelling case that a homelessness minister would meaningfully help address the problem, I'd be open to the proposal. My general preference has always been for a smaller, leaner government — but considering the size of Ford's existing cabinet, that ship has not just sailed, it's sunk. What's one more, right?
But permit me this note of caution. Homelessness is, to state the obvious, a complicated issue. It is multi-causal, and some of these causes overlap and compound each other. But in very general terms, we can view homelessness — especially the visibly worsening homelessness we are now dealing with — as being driven by two major problems: housing costs and untreated mental-health and/or substance-abuse issues.
The issue also involves health care as well as law enforcement and justice, at least in terms of managing or mitigating some of the harms caused by homelessness and addiction. Police should be a last resort, but clearly, they are sometimes needed.
Look at that list again. Housing. Mental health. Health care. Addictions. Law enforcement and justice, or what I'll lump together under the handy term of "public safety."
We already have ministries responsible for all these things. We have a literal housing minister for the housing part. Two of them! We have a minister of mental health and addictions for the mental health and addictions part. We have a health minister. Public safety is spread among a few ministries at the provincial level, but believe me, we've got ministers on that beat, too. Cities and the federal government also have a variety of people assigned to these jobs, across departments and ministries of varying titles and descriptions.
And the problems, as my readers will have noticed, are getting worse. Public safety is deteriorating. Addictions and mental health are growing problems. Housing is getting probably more attention than at any other time in my lifetime, and Ontario is still struggling to hit its targets.
I get it: there is some logic and appeal to making homelessness a specific thing to be overseen by a specific minister. In theory. But forgive me for noting that a lot of the specific things we have already assigned to specific ministers to address are, if anything, getting worse. And based on that, I am not overwhelmed by a sense of serene confidence that our problem is that we're just one minister shy of the optimum number of ministers required to actually begin fixing these problems.
Maybe we do need a homelessness minister. Really. Maybe we do. But we absolutely need to demand better from the ministers we already have assigned to the job of fixing problems that are instead, at present, getting obviously and visibly worse. Before we add another minister, can we try just adding some accountability and maybe a sense of urgency first, and see what happens?
Just a thought.
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