Gimme shelter
The housing crisis in aboriginal communities
ANDREW LODGE STAFF
“The houses, strewn randomly in an area of several square kilometres, are each the size of a suburban garage. Most are tattered and weather-beaten; very few have glass windows . . . More than one-third [of residents] are essentially homeless — sharing the overcrowded homes of friends or relatives, or living in shacks or decaying houses.”
So writes award-winning Globe and Mail journalist Geoffrey York in his landmark book The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada. York was writing about the remote Cree town of Shamattawa in northeastern Manitoba, but he could have been describing any number of aboriginal communities across the province and throughout much of rural Canada.
The housing situation in aboriginal communities has been in crisis for a long time now, but improvements have been slow in coming. Dozens of studies — some, like the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996 and the Auditor General’s Report in 2003, issued from the highest levels — have pointed to the problem, yet action with positive consequences has remained elusive.
In the northern community I recently visited, the concerns regarding housing are typical of other aboriginal towns in the province. Contaminated drinking water, dilapidated structures, poorly heated and improperly sealed houses, and persistent mould are some of the more common complaints. This is all compounded, it seems, by the sheer statistical incompatibility of, on the one hand, available housing, and on the other, a rapidly growing population. “Every year there are more of us,” says one resident I spoke with last week, “and every year they build a few more houses, but they are always behind and they never catch up.”
The situation is unlikely to improve in the near future, according to National Aboriginal Housing Association President David Seymour. “I am extremely dismayed that there was no reference to new money to help address the poor housing conditions endured by the aboriginal peoples across Canada in today’s federal budget,” said Seymour in a written statement in reaction to last week’s budget release by the ruling Conservatives.
Overcrowding
One only needs to visit a few houses in aboriginal Manitoba to get a sense of the housing crisis and the overriding issue of overcrowding. In many houses, every room is used to sleep in, whether it’s a bedroom or not, and often several people must share one space. With little or no room for storage and with so many occupants, the houses are easily cramped.
The overcrowded conditions are reflected in housing density figures. According to a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, the number of people per room in a given living space among the aboriginal population in Canada is double that of the national average. This means, according to the National Aboriginal Health Association, that one in four aboriginal people in this country live in conditions considered by demographers to be “crowded.” Not surprisingly, this has been shown to be directly linked to several health and social issues. In Nunavut, for instance, where the housing shortage is most severe, lower respiratory tract infections among infants, infections that can be life-threatening, are reported to be second highest in the world. Some researchers have also argued that violence, in the form of suicide and partner abuse, is more likely under these crowded conditions. In Nunavut, the incidence of such social ills is astronomically higher than the national averages.
And the problem will likely only get worse, if current trends are any indication. Aboriginal people represent Canada’s fastest-growing population, and, in all, over half the population is under the age of 25. Studies on population patterns indicate that there is little to no evidence of a growth rate decline in the near future.
No one is exactly sure of how many houses are needed. In 2001, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada estimated that 8,500 houses were needed on reserves across the country. This figure does not include off-reserve housing needs, which are also substantial. Nor does it include the northern territories. A study conducted in Nunavut by the University of British Columbia estimates that, in that territory alone, with its comparatively small population (only 30,000 people in 2006), $2 billion will be required over the next 10 years to bring the housing situation up to snuff.
Broken houses
As if the housing shortage was not problem enough, the existing structures in many communities are in appalling shape. In 2003, the Auditor General of Canada reported that almost half of current aboriginal residences required renovations of some sort. In the same report, researchers noted that many homes currently being built failed to meet national standards. Both issues are compounded by the difficulty in accessing many of the northern communities for substantial portions of the year.
Houses with holes in the walls, with only plastic or plywood over windows, with furnaces that don’t work, or without adequate insulation to begin with, do not do much to protect their inhabitants in the cold winter months. And since many communities are located in the north, the winters are colder and longer than even most Winnipeggers can fathom. When supplies become scarce, many residents say that they simply end up doing without.
Central to the notion of housing quality is potable water, which remains an issue of primary importance in many communities. Two years ago, the topic of water quality on First Nations reserves was thrust into the national spotlight when the community of
