Housing: The Uncomfortable Reality

Editorial by Champagne Thomson, Development Manager, Shelter House Thunder Bay

Seventy-two emergency beds, one case manager, rental costs vastly disproportionate to the rates of social assistance, barriers to entry at every turn—the vicious cycle continues. 

Growing up, we were taught to live within our means, not spend more than 30% of our income on our rent, and do our best to tuck an additional 20% of our earnings into a savings account as a contingency fund. By our grandparents’ standards, we are failing. Now let’s be more realistic and add to this the complexities of intergenerational traumas, poverty, and debt, forced institutionalization, lack of good credit, and health concerns that impact our mobility and/or cognition. This is the reality for the majority of individuals we serve here at Shelter House. 

Many people take for granted having identification or even a wallet to keep precious items safe. And those who have lost identification know it can be tricky to replace, even with a semi-consistent permanent address. Imagine how much harder this would be if you were unhoused, without a source of income to cover the replacement costs, and inability to access social assistance without a form of valid identification. Again, it’s a cycle wrought with anguish. The systems we are forced to navigate in our society are stacked against our Shelter House residents, the systemically marginalized community members we provide shelter to.

To compound this grimness, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Thunder Bay has a less than 3% vacancy rate overall, which is not specific to affordable housing. Also, in 2023, Thunder Bay’s average bachelor apartment was $823 a month before rental insurance and a one-bedroom apartment was $1,054, according to Homeless Hub’s Thunder Bay Community Profile. However, individual recipients of Ontario Works can only receive a maximum monthly amount of $733, with Ontario Disability Support Program recipients only receiving up to a maximum of $1,368. What does this mean, you may wonder? Well, it means that finding a place to call your own isn’t as simple as many believe, with rental rates for a modest living space often equating to over 60% of an individual’s social assistance cheque.

One of the many damning narratives we seek to challenge is that laziness is what contributes to being unhoused—an age-old myth that requires some urgent reframing and grounding in the reality of what barriers exist when seeking to access any semblance of socioeconomic stability. We need to start thinking about lack of housing as a systemic negligence rather than an individual one for real change to occur.