November 27, 2008

Rental Assistance Under-performs

Rich Coleman, Minister of Housing and Social Development, was on the defensive in question period Wednesday when the NDP's Jenny Kwan asked about the havoc caused in Little Mountain Housing in Vancouver. That's the project near Queen Elizabeth Park that the Campbell government decided to redevelop, only to have its plans go off schedule with completion now expected after 2011. The City of Vancouver has yet to issue a development permit, yet most of the former residents have been moved and 205 units of housing sit empty while thousands of homeless people sleep on Vancouver's streets. While ignoring questions regarding Little Mountain, Coleman let slip some updated statistics on his under-performing rental assistance program.

Astute readers of the Vancouver Sun or Province may have noticed full page ads that for five days between November 17th -21st promoted the government's rental assistance program. Each ad featured a family that personally benefited from the program, and a box towards the bottom of the ad that suggested readers could make other families aware of the existence of the program. The ads were part of a partnership with the YWCA Vancouver, The Salvation Army, the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society, Family Services of Greater Vancouver, and S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to promote awareness of the rental assistance program. BC Housing's website doesn't say how much the ads cost or whether any of the partners helped the government foot the advertising bill.

It is hard to understand why the Campbell government has spent tens of thousands of dollars on advertising the rental assistance program instead of asking the Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner for permission to use the government's database on MSP premium subsidies to directly contact families that are likely eligible for the program. It is almost as if the government is more interested in appearing to be willing to help than it is in actually helping families who need help with housing.

Coleman's release of a statistic during question period on November 26th shows that even a greatly abbreviated one week session of the legislature helps to hold the government accountable. He said that: "In the last two years alone, 7,000 families in B.C. with children have received rent assistance in the province of British Columbia where they live."

From his answer, it is unclear if there are currently 7,000 families receiving rental assistance or whether 7,000 is the number of families currently receiving assistance plus all of the families who once received assistance over the last two years but are no longer receiving the benefit. A year ago, on November 22, 2007, Coleman appeared on Voice of BC with host Vaughn Palmer and boasted that 4,000 families had taken advantage of the rental assistance program. If 3,000 more families were added in the past year, that's progress, but there are a few problems with Coleman's figures.

On October 3rd, 2006, Coleman said: "This strategy will immediately assist approximately 15,000 low-income working families and homeless individuals." In February 2007, then Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced an expansion in eligibility for the program and in her budget speech said: "...5,800 additional families - more than 20,000 in total - will be eligible to receive extra money to help with their housing costs."

Twenty one months after the Campbell government announced an expansion of the rental assistance program, it has yet to reach much more than a third of the number of families it claimed would immediately benefit. Something is seriously wrong, and it is not that there aren't a lot of poor families in BC. First Call BC recently released its report on child poverty, indicating that for the fourth year in a row, BC had the worst record in Canada.

The Campbell government has a history of being less than straightforward about its record on the amount of social housing in B.C. Why has housing redevelopment at Little Mountain stalled? Why have units been empty for months while homeless sleep on the streets? Why hasn't the rental assistance program come anywhere close to what the government promised to deliver? The Campbell government needs to be much more transparent about what is happening to social housing under its watch.