Re: Simcoe County homelessness numbers soaring according to new data

The increase in rent is at the base of the issue. I am no expert nor an economist; I can only speak about what I have observed.

In Owen Sound real estate prices have soared, which is the same as in the rest of Canada. In our city the buyers of rental housing are largely corporations.

Corporations only exist to maximize profits for themselves. For marginal renters it is impossible to meet the standards required by the corporations - it is almost the same as a mortgage. First and last, credit check, police report, proof of steady employment, bank records. The potential tenant must show that the cost of housing will not be more than one-third of net income. Who can meet these standards? Most of the youth in our population certainly can't.

If you don't have a place to sleep and eat you can't possibly get or keep a job. Ergo, you have no chance of housing security. And around it goes.
And it is the same across the province. It is a provincial problem which no one is willing to address. Social housing should be the answer but there really is no incentive for a politician to stand up for the sort of economic shift that would at least start to remedy the problem. The homeless are considered to be the dregs of society and no one is coming to their rescue. Emergency housing is available on a very limited scale and it is not really housing in any practical sense.

A decade ago people with very limited means could at least rent a room and work their way up from there. There are no rooms at this point unless you can meet the criteria stated above.

There are hundreds of people in this city who have no guaranteed place to sleep each and every day.
What to do? Stop ignoring the issue. Make it a priority to house the homeless. At least invest in and provide homeless shelters which are supported on the municipal level.

Many people in this city are like my husband and I. We bought our property twenty years ago when prices were rock bottom. If we hadn't been so completely lucky as to have been able to do that we would have been priced out of the market. We would be absolutely unable to pay for a place to live in today's market.

We would be homeless.

- Kathleen Mann Jensen, Owen Sound

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