Introduction and Welcome
There has been a growing and concerted effort in our community to deal with the crisis of homelessness, but that increase in support needs to continue if we are to reverse the disturbing trends in poverty and housing that we have seen over the last decade.
There is an affordable housing crisis in the City of Hamilton. Although there are a great many individuals and agencies who are working very hard to find solutions, the numbers of persons who live without safe, affordable, adequate, accessible, and permanent housing in our community is rising.
In our community, and in the larger Canadian community, we are seeing increasing numbers of people who are living in poverty and because of this fact, we are also witnessing a great number of individuals and families accessing emergency services such as shelters or food-banks, while they attempt to access the shrinking stocks of affordable housing.
There is a crisis among service providers in the City. As our shelters operate at or over capacity, food-banks and meal programs scramble to provide essentials to an ever-growing population of hungry men, women, and particularly children; legal clinics and agencies offering housing assistance attempt to help growing numbers of families who have lost their housing or their means of retaining housing; immigrants and refugees struggle to overcome cultural barriers to accessing affordable housing and social assistance; and, other supportive services look for ways to meet ever increasing demand with dwindling resources. There is also a policy crisis stemming from the absence of any new social housing to meet growing demand, the downloading of responsibility for that housing, and from the debilitating cuts to social assistance that occurred in 1995. Most importantly, it should be stressed, there is a very human crisis being experienced by many members of our community 24 hours of every day that they struggle to get by without safe, affordable, adequate, accessible, and permanent housing.
I would invite you to explore this section of the SPRC website, and urge you to become involved in local and national initiatives to address this national disaster.
Please feel free to contact us or go to more information on The Crisis of Homelessness.