“When a Bed is Home: The Challenges and Paradoxes of Community Development in a Shared Housing Program for Homeless People” in Canadian Review of Social Policy (58) – Special Edition on Canadian Homelessness, 62-83
There is no wishing away the fact that homelessness has grown into a socio-political problem of alarming proportions in several North American urban centres. The extent of this problem in Canada can be seen in the declaration by mayors of Canada’s 10 largest cities that homelessness is a national disaster worthy of the type of response traditionally reserved for natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. Pointing to this declaration, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued a report in 1998 criticizing Canada’s treatment of the poor, pointing out that the Canadian government had failed to ensure that all Canadians enjoy economic and social rights guaranteed by a UN covenant to which Canada is a signatory. To support its conclusions that Canada is not taking care of its low-income citizens, the report specifically points to “crisis” levels of homelessness, skyrocketing usage of food banks, deep cuts to welfare rates, and inadequate funding for battered women’s shelters.
In Toronto, the city with the largest number of Canada’s homeless people, the homelessness crisis has been fuelled by social, economic, and political realities such as a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent, rents that are rising faster than inflation, limited construction of affordable rental housing, loss of existing rental housing stock because of demolition and conversion, an increasing number of households that need affordable rental housing, and decreasing tenant incomes.
Uzo Anucha is an Associate Professor in York University’s Department of Social Work and the founding director of the Applied Social Welfare Research and Evaluation Group. Her work and research interests include homelessness and under-housing; immigration and diversity; community-based research; critical positive youth development; social work; international social work.
Other publications from this author include:
- “Growing New Roots: The Housing Experiences of Racialized Newcomers in a Second -Tier Canadian City” in Canadian Social Work– Special Issue on the Settlement and Integration of Newcomers to Canada (2014)
- “Negotiated challenges in the workplace: Immigrant women’s views and experiences of employment in Canada”: Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 27 (4), 420-434 (2012)
- “Housed but Homeless? Negotiating Everyday Life in a Shared Housing Program for Homeless People” in Families in Society – A Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 91 (1), 67-75 (2010)
- “Engaging the Canadian Diaspora, Youth Social Identities in a Canadian Border City” in McGill Journal of Education, 44 (3) (2009)
- “The Challenges and Possibilities of Re-visioning Social Work Education in Africa” in New Directions in African Education: Issues in Curriculum, Pedagogy, Policy and Access (2009)
- “Increased racial group breast cancer care and survival differentials in America: Historical evidence consistent with a health insurance hypothesis, 1975 to 2001” in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 113, 595-600 (2009)
- “Trans-nationalism, social identities and African youth in the Canadian diaspora” in Social Identities, 15 (2), 227-242 (2009)
- “Exploring a New Direction for Social Work Education and Training in Nigeria”, Social Work Education – The International Journal, 27 (3), 229-242 (2007)