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Visible homelessness persists at crisis levels in London.

This is a tragic outcome in our city, particularly striking for those who experience homelessness, but also for their families, for those who provide services, for local organizations and businesses and for all members of our community discouraged by our inability to do better.

When faced with tragedy and challenge, we often come together to find solutions. However, sometimes we turn against each other in times of conflict.

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It is dismaying to see local businesses and social services at odds over the next steps to support people in east London. The Old East Village Business Improvement Area recently suggested that relocating services could improve the neighborhood’s situation. However, this risks missing the bigger picture. Likewise, I worry about the Council. Susan Stevenson suggests that mental health and addiction services are the only solution: do the same.

The people most likely to experience homelessness are those living in poverty and are disproportionately those living with a mental illness or substance use disorder. It is easy to assume that these are the causes of homelessness. However, this assessment is not statistically true, because while rates of mental illness and substance abuse are fairly consistent across Canada and between comparable countries, rates of homelessness vary widely.

Internationally, compare Finland, Canada and the United States, where rates of mental illness are equal. Yet Canada has a much higher rate of homelessness than Finland and the United States has a much higher rate than us. More locally, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver experience much higher rates of homelessness than Saskatoon, Quebec and Belleville, but almost identical per capita rates of substance use disorders.

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Statistics Canada uses core housing need as a measure of housing deprivation, and core housing need is actually highest in our wealthiest cities and lowest in our low-income cities. Homelessness is therefore not caused by poverty, mental illness or addiction, but rather by the unaffordability of housing. Our richest and most desirable cities have the highest rates of homelessness as people compete for housing. Poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse then serve not as causes, but rather as discriminating factors in determining who is most likely to become homeless when housing is profoundly unaffordable.

Indeed, London’s homelessness crisis is the result of our successes: rapid growth and high desirability leading to exponential increases in housing costs and rents which have accelerated since 2018. As our city grows As we have become enriched and our populations have exploded, while very little new affordable housing has been built, homelessness has been created.

Therefore, relocating social services or increasing treatment services are not fundamental solutions to the problem. Of course, as a mental health and addiction nurse, I recognize that more treatment services are desperately needed as those seeking help wait on inexcusably long waiting lists. However, the only upstream solutions to homelessness involve the creation of housing units, which are affordable and offer wraparound support to those who need it. Indeed, services like Ark Aid reduce visible street homelessness by giving people a place to be while they are connected to housing.

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A perfect example is the recent purchase of a shuttered long-term care facility by a group of business leaders, which will be turned over to a permanent supportive housing provider to house those most in need. about how we can come together to find solutions. Our city would be better off if, rather than fighting with those who help us or settling for reactive responses, we could work collectively to create more housing options.

Abe Oudshoorn is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Western University and editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Homelessness.

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