Housing the Homeless
by S. Cosburn Mortimer, research director, Bankers' Alliance for Responsible Freedom
Homeless people are like the weather, everyone talks about them, but no one ever does anything about them. Many hands are regularly wrung, but nothing ever seems to get done. In an effort actually to do something about the problem of homelessness, the Bankers' Alliance for Responsible Freedom struck a task force which went across Canada talking to the homeless and to housing professionals.
It quickly became apparent that the complexity of this problem has been greatly exaggerated. The sole cause of homelessness is simply the lack of a home! That means the problem can be simply solved by arranging for homeless people to obtain a home.
We quickly observed that many homeless people have arranged substitutes for the homes they do not possess. For example, some sleep in bus shelters overnight. The problem, though, is of course that a bus shelter is not a home. And why is it not a home? Simply because the homeless person has no legal right to treat the property as a home. That is, he or she neither pays rent nor is in possession of a valid deed.
This problem can of course be easily solved. Simply charge rent for the use of public facilities such as bus shelters, heating grates, or the undersides of bridges. These rents need not be onerous. Application of the average price per square foot of rental accommodation in the neighbourhood to a thirty-square-foot bus shelter, for example, which furthermore would be used for only part of the day (principally overnight) would produce a quite reasonable rent. In downtown Toronto, for example, such a shelter would probably rent for about forty dollars a month.
Charging rent for these facilities would have the added advantage of qualifying homeless people for a full shelter allowance under welfare. Making these facilities generally available for rental would also make it easier for current welfare recipients to find accommodation whose cost their shelter allowances can cover. Their move into these more economical quarters would free up a large part of the more conventional housing stock, for which landlords, under the new rent control laws, could then obtain a welcome increase in rent to appropriate market levels. And of course the shortage of rental housing in Toronto would be alleviated.
Leases should be granted to new tenants of these facilities. This would discourage them from abandoning their rental property during the summer months. It would also provide to this impoverished class a chance to develop an understanding of the benefits of property ownership, which would help them to extract themselves from their impoverished circumstances.
Housing the Homeless © Coolth, 1999, 2003
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