We are at a critical turning point that will determine whether or not Canada will remain a nation of homeowners. Relative to household incomes, house prices in Canada are now the highest on record. Even before the pandemic, a growing share of first-time homebuyers had to depend on money from parents to buy houses. If prices stay at these levels, fewer parents will be able to help their children land a home.
“The bar is being raised further and further,” Eaqub told me in an interview a few years ago. “At these prices (the housing market) is only open to people who have generational wealth.”
The problem is spreading to small-town and rural Canada. House prices have jumped by 30 to 50 per cent in numerous small cities and towns across Ontario over the past year, as well as in many communities in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada. In Nova Scotia’s South Shore region, the benchmark price is up 60.8 per cent in a year, according to CREA data.
This Friday, join Annamie Paul, Green MP Paul Manly & experts Leilani Farha, former Special Rapporteur to the UN on housing, and Shalini Konanur, lawyer and executive director of South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, on this extremely pressing issue.
People across Canada are being impacted by a housing crisis. Greens are calling for measures to be taken to increase affordability.
During the pandemic, Canadians have been asked to stay home to stay safe, yet thousands of youth are facing homelessness. Each year in Ontario, 800-1,000 youth age out of the child welfare system.
In the early months of the pandemic, the Ontario Children’s Advancement Coalition (OCAC) and allied partners lobbied the Ontario government to stop the practice requiring youth to leave their care placements when they turn 18. In June 2020, the Ontario government placed a moratorium on this policy until March 31, 2021. Yet the pandemic continues and the clock is running out.
We research policy and work with youth and adults who are ensnared in the Canadian criminal justice system — many of whom have had contact with the child welfare system.
“Too many young people ‘age out’ to poverty, to homelessness. It’s a pipeline to the criminal justice system for some. And it exacerbates mental health conditions,” says Ratnam, co-founder of the non-profit Ontario Children’s Advancement Coalition (OCAC). https://t.co/MzP7WgHkj7
Children who are deemed by child protective services (CPS) as experiencing abuse or neglect may be removed from their caregivers and placed under the guardianship of the state. Based on 2011 census data, there are 11,375 children in the child welfare system in Ontario. Black and Indigenous children are highly represented, with Indigenous children comprising 30 per cent of kids in care in Ontario.
Many children and youth under state guardianship report moving among multiple homes and sometimes cities. Youth reported to us that they can count on having at least one move for every year that they’re in the child welfare system, and some move multiple times in a year. Frequent moves can disrupt education, resulting in low rates of high school completion. Youth who don’t complete high school face challenges and are more likely to experience poverty and rely on government assistance.
This instability can create low levels of attachment, trust and relationship-building. Many youth contend with mental-health challenges, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, that have an impact on their mental, emotional, social, spiritual, physical and occupational wellness and development. It’s unsurprising that many youth describe feeling vulnerable and angry in these circumstances. Often youth are labelled oppositional and criminalized due to the way they behave, but this is in response to trauma and their circumstances.
From a youth we interviewed:
“[Being in the child welfare system] really changed my character. It really just changed who I was as a person.… I’ve been in [at least] 20 different places and you know, it’s just so much [stuff]. And that’s the thing. Like all this stuff, people don’t realize … for somebody like me, I’ve been so thrown around, like [basically] tossed around, like here, there, everywhere.”
A CTV Report on aging out of foster care from March 2020.
Emerging adulthood
When youth under guardianship of the state turn 18, they are required to leave their foster care or group home placements. Some young people may continue to receive financial support after they turn 18 through the Continued Care and Support for Youth (CCYS) program. This financial support stops abruptly when they turn 21.
Psychologist Jeffrey Arnette’s theory of emerging adulthood recognizes a period of prolonged transition between late adolescence and fully independent adulthood. Emerging adulthood helps to explain shifting societal trends in recent decades.
Many emerging adults rely on their families for financial, housing and social support longer than in the past, often well into their 20s. More young people seek post-secondary education, face higher rates of unemployment and rising housing costs, and marry and have children at a later age, on average.
Despite these broader societal trends, currently youth in the child welfare system are required to leave their placements when they turn 18. While other young adults are able to gradually transition to independent adulthood, young people leaving care are abruptly forced into adulthood.
When asked how prepared they were for “independence,” one young person shared: “We all got like a Tupperware container, or a tub full of pots and pans and dishes and stuff like that. But yeah, there wasn’t really any preparation.”
Another added: “I just had to learn how to be a human on my own. Like, I had to learn everything that like a mom or like a parent or guardian is supposed to teach a kid from young.”
After the moratorium
Once the moratorium lifts on March 31, 2021, there will be a flood of young people leaving their homes and heading into a decimated housing and employment market.
Heather O’Keefe, executive director at StepStones for Youth, says:
“The devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have created further vulnerability for youth from the child welfare system with the lack of safe housing options, the loss of jobs, the inability to make rental payments and purchase essential items, and increased isolation and seclusion. The toll on the mental health of these youth has been exacerbated with the closure of libraries and schools, reduced services for people living in poverty, fewer opportunities to meet with counsellors and psychotherapists in person, and increased anxiety and suicide ideation.”
Our work with these young people underscores that the moratorium should be extended indefinitely. Rather than maintaining arbitrary age cut-offs for support, the provincial government should implement a readiness model.
This approach would work with every young person from the minute they enter the child welfare system to encourage better outcomes once they decide they are ready to be fully independent rather than being forced to leave care once they turn 18.
Youth leaving state guardianship have always been vulnerable. And with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, youth aging out of care will be in a much more vulnerable position, with potentially more severe impacts.
Cheyanne Ratnam co-authored this article. Cheyanne is the co-founder and executive lead of the OCAC, and an expert in the area of child welfare, homelessness and interconnected systems. Cheyanne also grew up in the child welfare system, experienced youth homelessness and was briefly engaged with the youth justice system.
There are growing calls for rent control in Halifax from tenants who say finding a new apartment in the city is simply not feasible anymore.
Danielle Murphy and her family of five have lived at the same apartment in Herring Cove, N.S., for the past seven years, but they were recently forced to move after the owner put the home on the market.
“It went on the market and it sold really quick,” said Murphy. “Now we have to be out.”
At the time when it was sold, Murphy was paying $1,250 for the three-bedroom home. Now, she says she’ll have to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 a month, a price she says her family simply can’t afford.
“Honestly, with the prices, we’re looking at a family of five living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment,” said Murphy. “We don’t have the flexibility to pay the ($2,000 to $3,000).”
The United Conservative Party (UCP) passed all of its policy resolutions this weekend. The two-tiered health-care system in Alberta is a doozy. It won’t be any surprise to hear it gets challenged in court. It would seem to violate Section 3 of the Canada Health Act, RSC 1985 c C-6:
It is hereby declared that the primary objective of Canadian health care policy is to protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and to facilitate reasonable access to health services without financial or other barriers.
NDP Health Critic Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) is calling on the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act and stand up to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s plan to privatize orthopedic surgeries.
“Jason Kenney’s privatization agenda will create a two-tiered health care system that violates our most basic principles of equal access and will hurt the quality of care,” said Davies. “We are calling on federal Health Minister Hadju to make it clear that this will not be tolerated.”
Unfortunately, the government may not be able to afford a challenge to this policy. In Policy 1, they want to add a new bullet: The United Conservative Party is committed to: c) operating within its means and reducing the size of the provincial debt.
They’ve already given our healthcare money to foreign owned oil & gas companies. No doubt, this is why we need a two-tiered health-care system.
Might be worth a look to see what other goodies are in this.
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