Jennifer Smith

On Wednesday afternoon I attended an open house forum on affordable housing in Halton. The event included a presentation on a recently approved development near Allendale, on the site of the old Martin House. The three storey, 80 unit building will provide assisted rental housing for qualifying seniors and people with disabilities. From what I understand, federal funding has already been approved for half the units while provincial funding for the other half is expected soon, but the Region is going ahead with all 80 regardless.

I spent that afternoon in the company of Ward 4 Councillor Wendy Schau, who has fought for affordable housing here in Milton as chair of the Milton Affordable Housing Coalition and in many other ways during her entire seven year tenure on Council. It's a tough row to hoe, especially in a town that likes to think of itself as uniformly affluent, where poverty and homelessness are too often perceived as 'city' issues.

I recently had my own little taste of just how wrong that perception is.

After our Milton Choristers concert at Knox Presbyterian Church last weekend, the folks putting the risers away noticed a middle-aged gentlemen still sitting in one of the back pews. He told them he had nowhere else to go, and had been sleeping out in the cold for the past three nights.

Not knowing what else to do, and knowing that Knox wasn't set up for this sort of thing, the guys phoned the police to see if they could help. Unfortunately, the man left before the police arrived, but it seems there wasn't much they could have done anyway. Apparently the nearest men's shelter is in Oakville, and the police aren't allowed to drive folks down there.

St. Paul's United has made some recent efforts to set up shelter space, first in their basement and later with the Fifth Wheel, but zoning, bureaucracy, and general resistance keep getting in the way.

Of course, this type of very visible homelessness is still relatively rare in Milton. But talk to Wendy about the pervasive housing issues in this town and you will come to understand that people sleeping on the street is only one end of a very broad spectrum of housing problems that exist in the more hidden corners of our town.

Abused or displaced youth sleeping in the woods or on downtown roofs. Individuals and families, out of work or just underemployed, sleeping on friends' couches, often moving from house to house. Unregulated and poorly maintained rooming houses instead of proper transitional housing. Seniors on a fixed income either physically or financially unable to stay in their own home, often living with family members because they can't afford anything else.

It's that last category who will be benefiting most from this new development, which is great news for Milton seniors. Unfortunately, there are all sorts of other people in Milton who desperately need affordable housing - or even just some more reasonably priced rental apartments.

The only option for them right now is to move elsewhere, and that's just not acceptable for a caring community like Milton.



For more on what's happening on the homeless and affordable housing front in Milton, I highly recommend the "Homeless in Milton, Ontario" blog.