‘A little goes a long way’ in keeping people housed, advocates say, and the social costs of not addressing the housing crisis are immeasurable.
The research is unequivocal and clear: housing is a public health indicator. Having a roof over your head means you’re far less likely to be chronically sick or have mental-health issues, and you’re more likely to have a social network and access to necessary services.
Yet for the third consecutive year, lack of housing continues to be a top concern for Canadians, with nearly half (45%) reporting being very concerned about soaring rents. There is a documented affordability gap in almost all Canadian cities, mostly affecting those making minimum wage. Many are only a few missed paycheques away from being unable to pay rent, feed themselves, or cover their medication, while food banks and homeless shelters are seeing people from all walks of life unable to make ends meet.
“It’s an issue of rising inequality in Canada and the Western world,” says Karel Mayrand, CEO of the Trottier Family Foundation, a Montreal-based foundation with a focus on science, education, health, and positive systemic change. With more than 25 years of experience in the philanthropic and environmental sectors, Mayrand traces a straight line from housing to health and its broader ramifications for a community’s overall wellness. “If you’re having issues paying rent, chances are you’re having a hard time feeding yourself,” he says. “Housing is connected to food security, health, and economic security. It’s a health emergency that’s 100% driven by inequality.”
Housing is connected to food security, health, and economic security. It’s a health emergency that’s 100% driven by inequality.
Karel Mayrand, Trottier Family Foundation
While some positive changes in Canada’s rental market are emerging (rising vacancy rates, slowing demand, increasing supply), the situation on the ground remains dire. Advocating for an increase in housing supply is necessary (philanthropy can help Canada build its way out of a housing shortage), but it’s becoming obvious that it’s equally important that substantial efforts (and funding) be expended, ensuring that people remain in their homes.
The cost-effectiveness of eviction-prevention programs that keep people in their homes has already been proven. A recent Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC) study concluded that every $1 invested in eviction prevention and housing stability saves $2 to $6 in emergency system costs. In other words, it’s far cheaper and more beneficial for governments and philanthropic organizations looking to fill existing budgetary gaps to fund and equip tenants’ rights organizations and community partners ensuring that housing-insecure Canadians remain housed through a variety of tenant-support services.
Keeping the vulnerable housed
Partners for Affordable Housing, a national social-impact organization that mostly operates in Alberta and Ontario but mobilizes socially inspired capital to accelerate relief across the country, offers programs like the Tenant Stability Fund. Established and maintained with donations from philanthropy, the fund is designed to help Canadians access existing rental housing and maintain their homes during times of economic uncertainty and to provide a clear pathway to housing stability. “The fund isn’t just rental supplements but funding that goes directly to non-profits supporting tenants being sustainably housed,” says Jolene Livingston, the founder and CEO. “We fund all of the wrap-around services keeping tenants stably housed. Our role is to fill the gaps.” Examples of services can be paying for a support coordinator who works with vulnerable tenants to ensure they’re gainfully employed, pay the rent on time, and understand fiscal responsibility.
With nearly 30 years of experience in the social impact space, Livingston has built a reputation for unlocking resources and helping partners achieve more together by investing in community. “It’s not really the job of at-market developers to go the extra mile and offer wrap-around services, so if they can partner with a credible non-profit, we then come in and fund that non-profit,” Livingston says. “We don’t directly fund the tenants; we fund the non-profits already doing a good job of this kind of work.”
Many of these services are a gateway to even more assistance for those with complex needs, enabling them to maintain housing by allowing them more stability. The success of initiatives like Toronto’s Dunn House demonstrates how providing supportive housing with wrap-around services significantly improves tenant health outcomes and reduces reliance on emergency services.
Financial management is key
Groups like the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC) in Toronto rely on philanthropy to offer a holistic approach to housing stability. That includes advocacy, support for tenants’ rights organizations, and several direct programs designed to keep tenants in their homes, like the Money Matters program.
PARC supportive housing is designed for people experiencing mental-health or substance-use challenges. With existing vulnerabilities that require services to address complex needs, they can easily fall through the cracks. Finding themselves homeless would only add to their physical and mental-health challenges because having no fixed address is a huge barrier in accessing services.
“Financial management is so important for people to keep their home,” says Barbara Domenech, PARC’s executive director. “We work with tenants, so they understand both their rights and responsibilities to avoid eviction.” The Money Matters program even conducts financial literacy and training for PARC’s own staff, so they’re better positioned to help at-risk clients struggling with their finances.
It costs money to keep people homeless. That ends up costing society in many different ways.
Barbara Domenech, Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC)
With extensive experience in housing, mental health, and community services, Domenech understands the clear link between housing and health. She’s unequivocal about homelessness significantly increasing the risk of premature death. “You get sick more often and you over-rely on emergency services. Without a fixed address, your treatment is often not completed because they can’t find you. It costs money to keep people homeless. That ends up costing society in many different ways.”
Money Matters has a voluntary trusteeship, a service where a trusted third party helps manage funds for essentials like rent and food, reducing financial stress. The program, Domenech says, is currently swamped because there’s such a need for it. “I wish we could open it up to even more people, but we simply don’t get sufficient funding for it.”
Tenants’ rights groups essential for housing advocacy
Often funded directly or indirectly by philanthropic organizations, tenants’ rights groups fight back against unreasonable rent hikes and actively prevent evictions. They raise awareness about the right to affordable housing and ensure that the needs of tenants aren’t ignored in favour of private development interests. They help curb speculative practices in the housing market and ensure that low-income renters can find permanent and affordable housing options.
In a profit-driven real-estate market, where it’s routine to see investors buying up buildings and renovicting tenants, these groups empower tenants to know their rights, organize, protest, and put pressure on landlords and policymakers. “We need these associations to defend tenants,” Mayrand says, “because they’re often older, lack legal literacy, and can’t afford a lawyer.” Protecting people already housed from being evicted, he says, is a huge component of solving the housing crisis.
The Trottier Family Foundation actively supports tenants’ groups like the Comité logement de la Petite-Patrie, which helps vulnerable tenants being pushed out by speculation, and the Organisation d’Éducation & d’Information Logement de Côte-des-Neiges, a non-profit that helps protect tenants’ rights in a Montreal neighbourhood that’s home to many new immigrants and has one of the highest low-income rates on the island. The foundation also funds partnerships with organizations like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which assists low-income tenants and supports broader efforts for housing affordability and equity in Montreal.
‘A little goes a long way’
“The typical granters understand the need for this funding,” Livingston says. “The tough thing about it is that there’s never enough money, and core funders of these rental supplements don’t have enough funding.” She says there needs to be better awareness about what can be done with philanthropy and how quickly it can make a difference. “With corporate–community investment,” she says, “a little bit goes a long, long way in moving a tenant from true dependence and precarity to independence. One donor funding one family can have a major impact.”
“At PARC, we always advocate for increased funding for our affordable housing to be able to staff them correctly so the people living in these homes have all the support they need,” Domenech says.
Some of the pushback is that philanthropy can’t give enough money to put a real dent in the crisis, but Livingston argues there’s a multiplier effect when one starts to donate and talks about it. “Just $50,000 with Tenant Stability can keep two families housed for three years per household,” she says.
We’ve seen over the last decades that the government isn’t getting the job done on their own, and the crisis is so acute right now that it really requires an all-play.
Jolene Livingston, Partners for Affordable Housing
With roughly 8,000 providers of community housing across Canada and the majority of them reliant on some form of government funding or some other grant-funding mechanisms, Livingston emphasizes the need for more cooperation. “We’ve seen over the last decades that the government isn’t getting the job done on their own,” she says, “and the crisis is so acute right now that it really requires an all-play. We need corporate–community investment and philanthropists at the table to assist because we’re not going to catch up anytime soon, and every day the crisis deepens.”
“We can’t delay,” she adds. “We’ve got to stop thinking it all has to come from government because it’s not going to.”
Funding advocacy enhances tenant stability
While philanthropy supports tenant-led social housing initiatives in Canada by providing flexible seed capital and leveraging private investment for long-term affordability, it also amplifies marginalized voices and influences the public conversation. By leveraging philanthropic support, it can fund research and data-gathering that can explain the root causes of the housing crisis and help lobby for better public policy.
“One of the greatest successes of philanthropy in Canada was the fight against tobacco,” Mayrand says. “Public information campaigns, medical research, and advocacy convinced the government to ban cigarettes from public spaces. Advocacy is an important piece of the puzzle.”
Mayrand says the debate in this country shouldn’t just be about building more homes, but also about what kind of homes we’re going to build and for whom. “If you don’t get to hear from tenants and the most vulnerable,” he says, “we’re going to keep building bigger homes for those lucky enough to afford them. This notion that if we build these houses it will free up more apartments for the more vulnerable is simply not true. If I leave my apartment tomorrow and build a new house, that apartment will be on the market probably for 40% more. There’s no trickle-down effect.”
Funding research that raises public awareness about the need for rent control and how real-estate speculation can be minimized by taking housing off the market via non-profit building, co-ops, and land trusts is a major way of increasing public support for such projects.
“We advocate for the regulation of the rental market because many people’s income can’t support anything that isn’t affordable housing,” Domenech says.
Why tenant advocacy matters for the broader non-profit sector
The social costs of homelessness are too high to consider eviction-prevention programs anything other than a societal investment. When one factors in healthcare costs, the mental and physical effects of people living in unsanitary conditions, the negative effects on child development, and the lack of shelters for women escaping gender-based violence, as well as the unrest and violence social inequality can create, the costs of not addressing homelessness are immeasurable.
Tenants’ rights groups are a crucial part of the broader charitable and non-profit sector because secure housing is a fundamental human right, linked to the success of many other non-profit goals: health, education, and poverty reduction. Tenant groups promote social stability and public health by reducing reliance on emergency and social services.
“There’s no health without housing,” Livingston says. “Any core social cause that needs to be addressed needs to start with housing. If someone’s worried every day about where they’re going to put their head down at night, they’re not going to be able to deal with the core challenges and issues that have made them housing-insecure to begin with.”
There’s no health without housing. Any core social cause that needs to be addressed needs to start with housing.
Jolene Livingston
Access to stable and affordable housing has been linked to better individual and community health indicators. “Without a fixed address, it’s hard to get official documentation or even a job,” Domenech says. “Housing is connected to so many different things.” When we defend the rights of renters, we help ensure individual well-being and a stronger, more equitable society for everyone.
Tenants’ rights groups help with poverty reduction by providing a wide range of direct support services, legal advocacy, and policy initiatives that address both the root causes and impacts of housing instability and unaffordability. With non-profits being squeezed out of their own neighbourhoods because of rising rents, tenant advocacy benefits charitable organizations, too.
Ultimately, tenant advocacy strengthens a community’s social fabric and economic well-being. “If you keep people in their homes and they’re supported,” Domenech says, “and you help them prevent eviction, it’s more likely their other needs will also be addressed. Being homeless takes years off your life. That’s how important having access to a home is.”
We need to fix this or we’re going to end up with a revolution.
Karel Mayrand
With social inequality increasing and 20% to 30% of Canada’s rental housing stock owned by institutional investors contributing to the “financialization” of the country’s housing, Mayrand says that failing to address these issues is akin to creating the conditions for social unrest. “There’s always been this social contract that if you have a job, you can afford a roof over your head,” he says. “Now, people have two jobs and are having a hard time paying rent. If we can’t provide food and housing for people, why should they trust this economic system?”
When the entire social contract starts falling apart, it leads to social unrest. “Housing is key,” Mayrand says. “We need to fix this or we’re going to end up with a revolution.”
