ONPHA 2015 Waiting Lists Survey Report

An affordable home is essential for success.

When Ontarians live in safe and affordable homes, children perform better in school, families are healthier, and employees are more productive. An affordable home is the foundation that each of us needs to reach our full potential.

But for too many Ontarians, an affordable home and the stability and security that it offers, is out of reach. More than 168,000 households are waiting for a home that’s affordable enough to leave money for groceries and winter boots once the rent is paid. The majority of these households will never get the affordable home that they’re waiting for – their application will be cancelled or they will give up, frustrated by the lengthy wait.

The Government of Ontario knows the importance of an affordable home. In their 2014 Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Province chose to take action on unaffordable housing because, in their words, “a person without a home is unable to get out of poverty.” While the Strategy’s commitments are laudable, they are impossible to achieve without adequate levels of funding.

For nearly all Ontario families, housing is their single largest cost. Housing costs have risen quickly in recent years, and many Ontarians are living in homes they are struggling to afford. Nearly half of all Ontario renters and close to a third of all homeowners are
spending more than they can afford on housing, placing themselves and their families at risk of homelessness.

Low vacancy rates and rising rents in the private rental market mean that people living in rent-geared-to-income housing are staying there longer. There’s simply nowhere else that they can afford to go. As a result, each year fewer households move into the homes they have been waiting for, and the wait time for new applicants gets even longer. In 2014, almost 1,000 fewer households moved into rent-geared-to-income housing than three years before.

Over the past decade, the federal and provincial governments have invested in housing, but this level of investment is insufficient. While the Poverty Reduction Strategy notes that the Province has committed over $4 billion in funding for affordable housing since 2003, Ontario waiting lists increased by over 40,000 households in the same time period.

In Ontario, local governments are responsible for housing, and they’re working hard to meet the growing demand. Many of them have developed new and innovative ways of increasing the availability of affordable housing in their communities and helping housing applicants. Their hard work is making a significant difference for some of the tens of thousands of households on Ontario’s waiting lists, but they need more support from the provincial and federal governments to solve the province’s housing crisis.

Investing in affordable housing is smart economic policy. In the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Province acknowledges that housing investments yield long-term savings in healthcare and help people find, and keep, jobs. The recent economic impact study of Toronto Community Housing demonstrated that federal and provincial government investment in the organization’s aging stock would add $18 million in GDP and generate $4.5 billion in tax revenue, while creating 200,000 employment years. With the federal government focusing on job creation as its number one priority, it is time all senior levels of government commit to dedicated, long-term funding that builds up communities, enhances competitiveness, and stimulates economic growth.

For the last four years, Ontario’s waiting lists have maintained a 1:2:3 ratio: for every one household housed from the waiting list, two applications for housing are cancelled, and three new applications are received. The result is thousands of families, seniors, and individuals who continue to struggle to keep a roof over their head, and who may never have the opportunity to realize their full potential.