Housing and Homelessness in Northumberland

Two weeks ago I was a speaker at the Northumberland Community Legal Centre’s annual Justice Forum, where the topic this year was homeless encampments. I brought a perspective from inside municipal government, talking about government as multiple overlapping systems each with their own jurisdictional distinctions and resource flows — a system of systems that, despite the efforts of many, externalizes or leaves out people who are experiencing homelessness.

To many, it seems that homelessness doesn’t exist in Brighton. I want to make it clear: homelessness exists virtually everywhere, but it’s often hidden. Brighton has many residents who are under-housed or precariously housed; whether they’re living with friends, couch-surfing from place to place, or living in awkward or even abusive situations simply because they have nowhere else to go. There are people who live in tents in Brighton, whether it’s in the back corner of a public park or Conservation area or secretly on otherwise unused rural properties. Homelessness is absolutely here; it IS a Brighton issue, even if we can’t always see it.

But it’s also a Brighton issue because we are a member municipality of Northumberland County, whose services for people experiencing homelessness are concentrated in Cobourg. People naturally congregate around the services that are available to them, and when someone in Brighton is in need we ultimately have to get them to Cobourg to receive help. So what’s happening in Cobourg regarding homelessness and shelter services is a Brighton issue: we are stakeholders in that conversation, even if we aren’t experiencing visible homelessness in the same way as the residents of Cobourg are.

Homelessness in Context

I want to briefly address the reason why homelessness exists, because it’s an issue that carries a lot of baggage. Many people feel that homelessness is a result of laziness, drug use, or other personal choices; some even go so far as to say that people experiencing homelessness are experiencing the natural consequences of their choices or lifestyles, and that we shouldn’t help them because of it. This view, or views like it, is shockingly common, and deeply upsetting. It’s also very false.

First of all, homelessness is primarily about not being able to afford housing. The average house price in Northumberland remains over $700,000, despite the market cooling off in the past year. At current lending rates, even a household making well over $100k/year would struggle to purchase a home. There are few rental units available, and they’re often priced even higher. The minimum wage in Ontario is $16.55/hr, but the “living wage” in Northumberland is well over $20/hr. While there’s a significant need for low-wage workers, someone working those jobs can work full-time or more and still not be able to pay their bills. I purchased a home seven years ago; if I had to buy this home at today’s prices, with the wages I currently make, I couldn’t afford it. I have a home because of the luck of good timing, not because I’ve worked harder than someone who has no home.

As for drug use, most of the homeless people who use drugs started doing so after they became homeless, not before. Drug use and recovery is extremely complicated, and while it’s tempting to see it as a simple cause/effect relationship between choosing to do drugs and becoming homeless, that’s neither true nor fair and we need to do better. Drug use absolutely makes it harder to house someone consistently, but let’s not put the cart before the horse; there’s currently almost nowhere to house people. So what can we do?

Humble Housing

The Northumberland County Housing Corporation continues to build new units of affordable housing, and to provide portable housing subsidies to residents who need it. They’re building dozens of new units a year; the trouble is, we need hundreds. The waitlist is growing as fast as the supply of housing. They are funded primarily by the province, but also by municipal property taxes; asking them to build more homes faster means asking the province for more money, or else approving significant property tax hikes across the county.

The County is also starting a new program, called the Northumberland Workforce Housing Corporation, which will build housing units intended for working families with incomes up to $120,000/year. Households who are eligible for the program will be able to make a down payment of $2,000 to purchase a home. The NWHC would be on title with the purchasers, and would buy back the home when the people decide to move. It’s a way of helping working families into the housing market, allowing them to build equity and financial stability as well as finding stable housing in a difficult market. I’m very excited to see this start later this year.

The County has also purchased the property at 310 Division Street in Cobourg on behalf of Transition House, which currently operates just around the corner. Transition House is the only emergency shelter in Northumberland, and I used to serve on its Board of Directors. The current setup includes 22 beds at the main house and 13 more in motel rooms elsewhere. Once they move, they’ll have 35 units in just the one location — so it isn’t an expansion of services, but it will be a massive improvement in that it will provide individual rooms rather than a few rooms with multiple bunk beds. Clients who currently have to share a bedroom with five others will have a secure space for themselves, making the shelter much safer and more stable for everyone. Clients also won’t have to walk the few blocks between the shelter and the Warming Room, because the new facility will have space for a Warming Room on site. The problems that come along with chronic homelessness, and the fear they naturally provoke in others, should be greatly allayed by this change. Unfortunately, many Cobourg residents are very concerned, and fear and outrage are being fed by misinformation.

Another great improvement in sheltering situations for people experiencing homelessness is often not seen that way: the establishment of a semi-permanent encampment on provincial land along highway 2 in Cobourg’s east end has been highly controversial. As the most visible representation of homelessness in Cobourg, it has drawn a lot of negative attention, as well as a significant amount of abuse from other residents. But for the people who live there, it’s a huge improvement in safety and security over living alone on the street. They’ve managed to get fireproof tents in order to keep warm, and they have each other for community and mutual support. Social service agencies can visit the encampment to provide support, rather than searching for people for days in order to help them; and likewise, police and first responders can visit to provide support and build relationships that improve outcomes for those people and make those jobs easier. One social service worker told me that there have only been two overdoses in the encampment over the past several months; people living alone or in small groups on the street experience many, many more. So as much as the encampment seems to many people to be the problem, it’s actually a huge improvement for those who live there and for those who serve them.

Evicting Encampments

One of the key topics of the NCLC event two weeks ago was the matter of evicting encampments. The encampment is currently on provincial land, but before that it was on County property, and was evicted; and before that it was on Cobourg municipal property, and was evicted. And with the provincial property they’re currently on up for sale, it’s likely that a private buyer will soon evict them too.

The law about evicting homeless encampments on public property is, as usual, very complicated. But two rulings (one against the Regional Municipality of Waterloo and one against the single-tier municipality of Kingston) in 2023 both noted that unless there’s an adequate shelter elsewhere, evicting a homeless person from public property violates their Charter rights.

To date it seems that Northumberland County has looked at stats on how many empty beds Transition House has on a given night and more or less said that as long as there are empty beds there, nobody has the right to camp on municipal property. The trouble is, there are ~80 people on the “by name list” (the way that people experiencing homelessness are counted and tracked through the social services system), and only 35 shelter spaces; so even if every bed was full, less than half of the people would be served. But it isn’t even a matter of simple math; there are a hundred reasons why someone might not want to access a bed at Transition House, and these court rulings note that many of those reasons are legally significant. Shelter spaces are not one-size-fits-all, and a shelter needs to be actually accessible to a person in order for them to be legally moved there from an encampment.

I’ve been looking at our bylaws in Brighton to see if we’re compliant with the Charter in this regard. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing has released a protocol to help guide our approach, and I’ll be asking my colleagues on the Northumberland Inter-Municipal Task Force on Housing and Homelessness for their takes on how we can ensure that our approaches can align to make for a more just and peaceful Northumberland for all.

Moving Forward

So whether it’s more rent-geared-to-income housing, or more workforce housing, or more market housing (hundreds of new units are currently planned in Brighton alone), or better shelters and responses to homelessness, your municipal governments are hard at work addressing the housing crisis. And we’d like to be moving faster, but we’re limited by resources. As I’ve said many times, it’s cheaper to house people than to pay for all of the services aimed at the unhoused; but building housing takes a big up-front investment, and tax increases are always unpopular. I hope that you’ll join me in supporting bold action that will reduce costs in the long term by prioritizing better options for people in the near future.