Housing is Scarce Everywhere
By John Mohan

If you've followed the Winnipeg Sun the last couple of weeks, you'll know I've been out of town on a cycling journey from Calgary to Winnipeg.

"Nivervillian" Mr. David Dyck and I endured rain, hills, headwinds, traffic and some really bad highways to complete the 1,300-km trek in 11 days. Our longest day was 197 km (equivalent to going from Brandon to Winnipeg) and our best day-long average speed was 33.5 km/h. Not bad for a couple guys in their 50s.

When I began talking about a bikeathon six months ago, my wife Brenda was less than enthusiastic. These things take a lot of work and she assumed (correctly) that much of it would fall on her.

Not about self indulgence or empire building, it would be a fundraiser for Siloam Mission. However, it also became an opportunity to address national homelessness through speaking engagements, individual dialogues and media interviews.

It's easy to understand that homelessness happens in large urban centres like Winnipeg, Calgary or Toronto. But it's also becoming a growing phenomenon in smaller cities such as Swift Current (pop. 16,500) where my family and I lived before moving to Winnipeg in 2001. Affectionately called "Speedy Creek," it appears to be a prosperous community of mainly white, middle-class citizens with about 30 churches, a WHL hockey team and a single high school. It's well-kept, clean, with new residential housing, a new hospital and soon-to-be-built casino. However, not everything and everyone is in perfect order. Some are struggling to exist in the boomtown and, like low-income people in Winnipeg, are facing the difficult decisions of how to afford shelter or food. Recently, a group of citizens began a meal program from a downtown restaurant. Just last week a piece of news reminded socially conscious residents that poverty and homelessness is present when a Central Avenue building used as housing for a couple of dozen people was condemned, leaving government and private agencies scrambling to find alternative living arrangements in a city with almost zero available affordable houses.

I asked the group I met with if anyone was building low-income housing or apartments. Shaking their heads, they said everything is being built for seniors and the middle and upper classes. There's no profit margin in building housing for the poor. (Sounds like here.) And if an affordable housing shortage is happening in Swift Current, it's happening across Canada. Cycling home across western Manitoba the last few days was a little tortuous due to the poorly-maintained Trans Canada Highway.

With bad highways, we pay the price through lost tourism and commerce, not to mention personal vehicle damage. Homelessness and affordable housing are also infrastructure issues. If we don't address them directly, we pay in other ways and it becomes even more expensive. Housing people in jails (some will commit a crime just to have winter shelter) or hotels or hospitals or mental institutions is not a cheaper option than building or providing affordable housing with support services. Sooner or later we have to address it.

Sooner rather than later seems the most sensible - even for a guy who just had a mid-life crisis on a bicycle across the Prairies.

Originally printed in The Winnipeg Sun Wednesday, June 25, 2008.
Reprinted with the permission of Sun Media Corporation.