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With the municipal elections just around the corner, non-profits across the Region have worked together to get input from candidates on key issues.
We asked every candidate running for local or Regional council to make a pledge to tackle key issues affecting housing, poverty and equity. Their commitments are below, along with the full text of the pledge commitments. Read on to see what your local candidates think about these issues.
For details on the issues, please feel free to review the background document at the end of this page. For information on the pledge and the non-profits leaders supporting it, please contact info@aBetterPeel.ca
Recognize that housing is a fundamental human right by ensuring that adequate resources are dedicated to progressively advancing the right to housing for all residents, particularly for those disproportionately impacted by poverty and discrimination.
Continuously increase the supply of affordable rental housing by implementing policy tools that will add to the existing stock of affordable rental housing, and by increasing investment in the construction of safe, appropriate, purpose-built, affordable, and deeply affordable rental housing that is accessible to vulnerable people and those most affected by poverty.
Preserve the affordable housing we already have by protecting the existing stock of affordable homes through advocacy, policy tools, and available funding.
Prevent, reduce, and end chronic, episodic and hidden homelessness, by expanding the Region’s eviction prevention programs, rent supports, and housing stabilization supports, and by promoting collaborative engagement with local homelessness sector service providers.
Support decent and sustainable lives for low-income residents by using our municipality’s place at the current provincial/municipal welfare modernization tables to advocate for adequate funding for municipal services to support low-income residents, and for sustainable rates for Ontario Works and ODSP recipients.
Advocate for adequate funding in all critical service areas, including health, education, gender-based violence, supportive housing, addictions, and mental health services in our City and Region, and apply those funds to services that equitably serve marginalized communities.
Develop and implement systems for reporting and accountability for action on equity, anti-Black racism, and systemic discrimination and commit to regularly communicating actions on these to the public.
This municipal election, we are calling on all candidates to recognize the most pressing issues that Peel residents are facing by signing the Peel Region Municipal Election Candidate Pledge. The pledge consists of six individual commitments that focus on housing and homelessness, income supports, and equity. This pledge and backgrounder is organized by Ontario for All, The Mississauga Food Bank, the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, Peel Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Peel Alliance to End Homelessness, the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, and the ABR-SD Collective.
Home is at the centre of human rights. Without adequate, accessible, and affordable housing, our other human rights such as equality, liberty, dignity, privacy, freedom of expression, and even life are threatened. All levels of government have the obligation and ability to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to adequate housing.
The Government of Canada passed the National Housing Act stating that all levels of government within Canada are required to recognize housing as a fundamental human right. Since then, municipalities have started to follow suit by publicly committing to housing as a human right. It is understood that ensuring that every resident has access to adequate housing is not an easy task. However, all governments must commit to the progressive realization of a right to housing to the maximum of its available resources and by all appropriate means.
The availability of affordable housing in Peel Region has become a pressing issue. While the region and municipalities have made some strides to address affordable housing, the problem has worsened. According to 2021 Census data, 38.4% of tenant households and 25.7% of owner households spend 30% or more of their income on shelter costs in Peel. Resale home prices have been continuously increasing with the average price for a resale unit increasing by 26.1% from 2017 to 2021 (Toronto Real Estate Board).
In order to ensure that all residents can afford adequate housing, it is important that all levels of government work together to explore and implement policy tools that will increase supply and preserve existing affordable housing stock.
Peel Region is experiencing a homelessness and affordable housing crisis. COVID illustrated that people who were homeless or on verge of losing housing were more vulnerable than the rest of the population. Still, shelter and housing policies that existed pre-COVID have not changed and homelessness and housing precarity are increasing. As of September 16, 2022, 750 people are living in Peel-based shelters and 200 people are in shelter overflow hotels. This does not include those who are living rough (streets or in encampments) or have precarious housing (living in a place that’s in a state of disrepair, living in a spot that’s overcrowded or unaffordable, or couch surfing). These numbers continue to grow on a daily basis.
The Government of Ontario has initiated a “modernization” of social assistance, which includes several changes to Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). Under the new plan:
How all that will work is still evolving. The province is meeting with municipalities jointly at provincial municipal social assistance reform tables to work out critical details. Some concerns people have about those table include:
Municipal leaders have a voice in that process. Will you use yours to address the issues affecting vulnerable residents in our Region?
Peel is not, by any measure, resourced in the way that reflects equity with other regions or with the needs of the community. People in Peel have about 50% less access to emergency care than other Ontarians. People in Peel have less access to Primary care than most regions. Peel schools have 6% to 10% less in funding per student than other GTA municipalities. Peel has less than 1/10 the Provincial Youth Outreach Workers Toronto has (and only about half as many as Ottawa).
Those shortfalls affect some communities more than others, and racialized and marginalized groups are clearly impacted most by these issues.
Fortunately, Peel’s community-based organizations have been valuable partners in implementing grassroots solutions that have been highly effective at addressing these challenges and the way they impact those most affected. As one striking example, local community agencies rescued the Province’s sputtering vaccine rollout, using community leadership and local knowledge to lift Peel from a national COVID hotspot and vaccine hesitancy centre to a leader in vaccination rates.
Increasing the investment in Peel, and ensuring the agencies best engaged in the communities most affected would do a lot to offset problems in our community.
Peel Council has already adopted this as a strategy, in June 2022. But strategies aren’t outcomes. Council must act on those strategies. Communities counting on that action need to be kept up to date on how those processes are moving forward, and we ask that you commit to action and open communication about progress.