The Victoria Council of Canadians Urges Victoria City Council to restore housing funding
2012 October 29, by Chapter Council
The Victoria City council in a narrow vote last week decided to cut $100,000 from Victoria City’s affordable housing funding.
Victoria’s budget should not be balanced on the backs of people who need help the most. The Housing Trust Fund is vital in bringing affordable rental homes to the city. The private sector cannot and will not pick up the slack. Affordable housing is the single most important part of ending poverty and helping the most vulnerable. Affordable housing is a smart investment that reduces crime, reduces police and social support budgets and greatly increases societal welfare.
We are sympathetic to the city’s needs to be more efficient in its funding and welcome the city’s leadership in working with the CRD to use its rental housing funds more effectively. We hope that the CRD, other municipalities and the private sector will answer this call. However, that promise for tomorrow cannot come at the cost of reducing funding today. So, while you explore collective solutions to our affordable housing crisis, do not cut funds.
We urge the Victoria City Council to reverse this decision and keep funding at current levels. We thank the councillors and the Mayor who chose to keep funding in the initial vote and hope the other councillors will cast a vote for affordable housing.
Contact the Mayor and City Council at http://www.victoria.ca/EN/contact-form/index.html?rec=122&subj=&referer=
Background
The Victoria City council in a narrow vote last week decided to cut $100,000 from Victoria City’s homelessness funding. Councillors Shellie Gudgeon, Lisa Helps, Chris Coleman, Geoff Young and Charlayne Joe-Thornton voted for the cuts and Mayor Dean Fortin, Ben Isitt and Marianne Alto voted against the cuts. The cut from $600,000 to $500,000 includes decreasing funding to the City’s Housing trust fund by $200,000. This decrease is partially offset by a $100,000 increase to the Capital Regional District Housing Trust Fund.
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30-Oct-2012 Update: Budget numbers corrected from comments, thanks councillor Lisa Helps.
Thanks for taking the time to write a blog post. First, the proposed cuts are from $600,000 to $500,000 not from $500,000 to $400,000 as you state. Second, in the Victoria Foundation’s Vital Signs Report for both 2011 and 2012, ‘cost of living’ surpassed homelessness (which had been first for many years) as the most important issue for Greater Victorians. That doesn’t mean that contributions to end homelessness should stop and indeed the plan is still for the City to contribute $500,000 per year to work on that issue. But Council can’t ignore the rising concern over the cost of living. One other way to keep cost of living down – in addition to building affordable housing – is to keep property taxes (which affect the cost of rent as well as home ownership) as low as possible while still providing quality services Again, not as an end in itself, but, for example to keep housing affordable for seniors on a fixed-income who have to pay property taxes, for young families in the same position, etc. If Council was to totally gut its commitment to housing and go from $600,000 to $0 you bet I’d be speaking out loud and clear against that. But this is a decision to reduce spending on housing by $100,000 per year for three years, an opportunity for the City to get its own house in order and to build a better future for all our citizens. Third and finally, housing is not the proper jurisdiction of the municipality but rather of the Province. The May 2013 provincial election is a good time to put pressure on all parties and request that the Province step up its commitment to ending homelessness in British Columbia.
Please see my blog post from this evening, “City of Victoria Housing Trust Fund – Building It Another Way,” http://www.lisahelpsvictoria.ca/ where I propose an alternative way for the City to continue to build its Housing Trust Fund.