Learn by example

The party conference season is upon us, closely followed by the comprehensive spending review. Regardless of the public posturing, the biggest issue at stake is where the axe will fall in October.

As this magazine’s What’s the Benefit? campaign has highlighted amply during recent months, housing benefit is a key target. Recent articles have focused on the lessons to be learned from cuts made across the pond in Canada and the US which left a trail of destitution in their wake.

Inside Housing’s timely warning about the scale of homelessness and housing need across the pond resulting from Canada’s ‘bloodbath budget’ in 1993 (13 August) and the paltry residual US welfare system (17 September) prompted me to reminisce. I began to think about some of the learning that I gleaned on a trip to the US and Canada in 2007 and which may be relevant in current times.

The American dream?

Returning to the US 15 years after being horrified by the numbers of people sleeping on the streets or housed in large shelters, I expected to encounter less visible homelessness because of concerted efforts by the federal government’s End Homelessness campaign. And I did. But the scale of homelessness is still scandalous. Estimates put the number of people experiencing homelessness in the US between 1.5 and 3.5 million people - that’s 1 per cent of America’s population. Around 22 per cent are thought to have a severe mental illness or other disability. Many are armed forces veterans.

Being less familiar with the impact of Canada’s bloodbath budget and under the illusion they had a more European approach to welfare provision, I was surprised to find that approximately 150,000 people were living in shelters and an additional 15,000 were estimated to be on the streets - about 0.5 per cent of Canada’s 34 million population.

In Calgary, an economic boom fuelled by new mining activity had resulted in some of the fastest rising house prices globally and a tripling of homelessness during a 12-year period. No one had a grip on the problem. Homeless families were required to report daily to a reception centre before being bussed to different shelters every evening. Thankfully, that’s beginning to change with the introduction of approaches imported from the UK and the US - where great practice exists despite the lack of welfare.

Chief among these has been a housing first model developed by Pathways to Housing. Sam Tsemberis, the US housing charity’s executive director and founder, has been advising groups in Calgary drawing on his longstanding success in housing and supporting homeless people with a severe mental illness.

Long and winding road

PTH secures private rented housing through rental assistance programmes, organises access to Medicaid (health insurance for those on low incomes) and provides a co-ordinated package of support, including help to find work and health care. Twenty-four hour emergency assistance is available from medical teams employed directly by PTH, including psychiatrists. There is a high degree of involvement of people who use the services, with many becoming employees able to act as strong role models for newer clients.

Innovation in tackling homelessness in Canada may have been wanting, but inspiration was to be found in the neighbourhood investment approach of many social housing providers there. Faced with 20 years of zero federal government investment and a corresponding downloading of responsibilities, the Toronto Community Housing which manages 50,000 units of social housing in the city, focused its strategy on helping people take greater control over their lives and neighbourhoods.

Citing research that shows that the degree of people’s sense of wellbeing correlates to the level of control they feel they have over their lives, TCH’s then CEO, Derek Ballantyne outlined how they were going about delivery: ‘In some cases, like building maintenance and repair, we are the leader. At times we are the catalyst, giving an issue the spotlight, such as the need for youth programmes and jobs. Sometimes the organisation may play the role as convenor, bringing other groups together to work on an issue like addressing school programmes in a neighbourhood. Finally, it may play the role of participant, representing the needs and interests of [its] communities, staff and tenants.’

Derek admitted to bringing this ethos from Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation where his former boss, exec director, Catherine Boucher told me, ‘We’ve got the photocopier, the phones and the meeting rooms so we can get things moving, get things started or support others in doing this.
‘We want to link our tenants to other services and other people in the community to act as an incubator but we don’t want to take everything over. Who are the best partners? Where would some of the initiatives best fit in the longer term? These are the important questions.’

Let’s work together

There are regular exchanges between the UK, US and Canada which inspire innovative approaches across the piece. We’ll need all the innovation we can muster in the next few years. This government says it wants to assess the effectiveness of interventions by outcomes rather than process. Yet will it also take note of the increased flow of homeless people resulting from disinvestment and reduced statutory entitlement?

For all the entrepreneurial spirit and the charitable impulse in the US, that nation cannot stop the flow of people ending up destitute. I must admit there are aspects of the coalition government’s policy agenda that excite me - community engagement and self help for example, and we all like less red tape. But I fear these policy shifts, together with the scale of cuts, are a very potent mix indeed. Just take a very good look across the pond.

Heather Petch is director of HACT