Welcome Centres Just Don’t Work: THE VOTER

The city has tunnel-vision on the “welcome centre” issue.

It does so totally disregarding its own experience and other evidence that’s right in front of city staff’s eyes.

Any plan for temporary housing should have, from the very beginning, included a concurrent plan for creating permanent housing. Instead city hall puts forward a nonsensical plan that has these refugees arriving in the city, spending “up to” three months in these “welcome centres” and then, if refugees haven’t found permanent housing, they are moved to “transitional housing” until they do get a permanent roof over their heads. How long will they be in transitional housing? Time and the housing market will tell.

What happens when the transitional housing is full because there is no permanent housing for people to go to? When they have no more room, people will have to stay longer at the welcome centre meaning there are no spaces for the next group arriving in the city. What’s the solution to that? Why, let’s build more welcome centres. So hello Kanata, hello Barrhaven and all the other communities at the top of the welcome centre location list.

There is no plan to create the quantity of permanent housing that will be needed.

Let’s just take a look at the evidence about the existing permanent housing market for affordable units that the city has in front of it. Even before the current influx of asylum claimants and refugees arrived, our shelter system was full to overflowing. Hundreds of our neighbours are already sleeping in shelters, on someone’s couch or on the street every single night. If, and it’s a very big if, it were easy or even feasible to move people from shelter beds to permanent housing in a matter of months, why has the city not been doing that for the people who are currently in the system, some of whom have been there for much longer than three months?

Will these newcomer centres take enough pressure off the existing system to allow it to find housing for the influx of locals who are becoming homeless each and every month because of the huge increases in rents in the city? Rents that most asylum seekers and refugees will also not be able to afford? The simple answer is no and what’s going to happen is that, within a very short time, there will be two backlogged systems instead of one. There will be the full-to-overflowing traditional system for locals and the full-to-overflowing ‘temporary’ system for all the rest.

Keep in mind also that the first welcome centre isn’t planned to open until Q4 of 2025, a full year from now. Where is their parallel plan to house and assist the 600 or so eligible people already in the city as well as any who will arrive in the next year? Or should I say, those who will be here by the spring or summer of 2026 since the Q4 2025 date is based on the city’s assumption that nothing will happen to delay that completion date, something most reasonable people will question.

The plan the city put forward should have been multi-track. First should have come a solid plan to quickly develop enough affordable housing so that those currently in the shelter system and otherwise unhoused would have a permanent roof over their heads with whatever supports are required to maintain that housing. Some members of the current homeless population are capable of living independently and just need a place to call home that they can afford. Others will need ongoing supports provided along with their housing and will require differing levels of supportive housing.

The second track should be temporary assessment centres responsible for the provision of shelter and supports for people who are asylum seekers or refugees that will allow them to find their feet in the city so that they are able to get permanent housing. The first priority should be housing because someone who has at least a secure roof over their head can much more easily deal with all the other challenges they face. They can simultaneously be connected with the services and supports they need so they can make a life in the city.

The third track is the swift creation of permanent affordable housing to provide for our homeless neighbours whether they are locals or come-from-aways. This would involve conversions of existing buildings for housing as well as new builds. This involves building many more housing units than the total number of shelter occupants, those sleeping rough, refugees and asylum claimants. Why? Because the city bandies about numbers of people needing housing that conveniently look at only those in crisis.

Who are they not including when identifying the need for increased housing? Where will young people looking for their first apartment (other than their parents’ basement)? What about people coming to the city for work, school or other purposes through means other than immigration? While some of those individuals will be looking for and able to afford higher-priced accommodation or be looking to buy a place, some of them will be competing in the same rental market as those who are homeless. A $2,000 two-bedroom apartment can become a home for four- to six-asylum seekers to share or it can be a home with a bedroom and home office for a government employee. Which applicant is the rental office likely to offer the lease to?

These so-called welcome centres do have their uses in helping people when they arrive but unless there is a realistic exit strategy, they will just become another finger in the dike. You can’t put together half a system and expect it to solve a problem.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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