Among the growing problems of affordability in cities across Canada including Thunder Bay, is the specific issue of homelessness. The latest point-in-time survey by the District of the Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board that was published in January of 2022 of 221 participants documented that 43 percent used emergency shelters. Indeed, the Board estimates that there are closer to 700 people experiencing homelessness in the 103,000-square-kilometre district of about 146,000 people and about 70 percent of them identify as Indigenous. Finding solutions to this complicated set of issues is an on-going process and into it has stepped the City of Thunder Bay.
Thunder Bay City Council has decided to move ahead on a recommendation to establish a $1 million fund to support local capital projects addressing poverty and homelessness in Thunder Bay. The fund is not intended as a stand-alone source of financing and is expected to leverage additional support from the federal and provincial government as well as other funders that could include private sector sources, philanthropic organizations as well as First Nations organizations. The projects are designed to be in the area of transitional or affordable housing and grant applications will be reviewed by a committee of senior city staff. The idea, initially proposed by Councillor Bentz, is innovative and perhaps one of the first in Canada and comes in the wake of the 2022 federal budget which has committed more funds for homelessness as well as a commitment to the redesign of federal housing strategies.
This program represents a start to fixing problems in a community that has received its share of bad press in the national media lately when it comes top homelessness, poverty and racism. City council approved the recommendation though there was one dissenting vote from Mayor Mauro. Mayor Mauro argued that such a fund would replace federal dollars and that the City is going to pour resources into projects that would have occurred with federal funding anyway. The Mayor is technically correct that funding to end homelessness is likely going to flow in greater amounts from the federal government anyway. Moreover, the housing crisis is a federal and provincial responsibility to solve even if its effects are felt largely at the local level. However, that does not mean a municipality should sit back and wait for someone else to start solving the problem.
At the same time, providing the municipal resources represents a way to kick start some aspects of the process in a cooperative manner given that the funds are expected from federal and provincial governments as well as other partners. In some respects, it represents an action in tune with basic principles of subsidiarity in fiscal federalism by signalling change from the grassroots. Rather than replace federal dollars, the Community Partnership Fund Thunder Bay is creating may actually attract more funding and give the option to the other levels of government, as well as private agencies, First Nations Organizations and philanthropy groups of an opportunity to accompany their verbal pronouncements with more effective actions. And besides, the political optics for Thunder Bay with this fund are positive even if the marginal impact is ultimately small. Change requires first steps to be taken and that is what this is.
Thunder Bay City Council has done some boneheaded things in the past but this is not one of them.
