Co-ordinated Access to Non-Profit Housing
Presentation to Social and Public Health Committee
by Sharon Hafner & Colin Gage, Community Housing Access Network (CHAM)
June 15, 2004

The presentation was made by Colin Gage and Sharon Hafner, members of the Board of Directors of the Community Housing Access Network.  Their sections are indicated.

Colin:

Good morning Mr. Chairman, committee members and members of the audience my name is Colin Gage and I work for Victoria Park Community Homes Inc. a private non profit housing provider with its head office in the City of Hamilton.

Victoria Park owns and manages a significant housing portfolio not only in the City of Hamilton but also 3 other municipalities those being Halton, Waterloo and Brantford. In this capacity we participate in three other coordinated access systems in addition to Hamilton. Through its volunteer Board of Directors, Victoria Park like other providers in the community are dedicated to that part of the citizenry that requires stable quality but most important, affordable housing. Given that Victoria Park was party to the genesis of the Community Housing Access Network and currently holds a seat on the Board of Directors of CHAN we have a direct interest in the outcome of coordinated access and its delivery in the City.

Prior to responding to the methodology employed by the Social Housing Strategist Inc. the consultants and the conclusions and recommendations put forward in their report as to how best to deliver coordinated access in the city as mandated in the Social Housing Reform Act we would like to formally acknowledge the spirit of cooperation and support that has been the cornerstone of our consultations with city staff. We would be remiss in not acknowledging their efforts and the willingness by staff to understand and in the final light addressing our concerns whether to our complete satisfaction, will be a matter of future debate.

Sharon:

My name is Sharon Hafner.  I work at the Housing Help Centre, a social service agency in Hamilton which helps tenants and people who are homeless find and maintain housing.  The Housing Help Centre's commitment to ensuring that Hamilton has an excellent co-ordinated access system, one that works for all applicants to social housing, has kept us heavily involved with CHAN since its inception several years ago.  The Housing Help Centre has always had a seat on CHAN's Board of Directors.  I have been the Housing Help Centre's representative on the CHAN Board for the last 4 years.

Colin:

We would like to take issue with that section of the Social Housing Strategist Inc. report that addresses the staffing needs (see page 28 of the report for details). The report bases its staffing needs by the size of the waiting lists comparable to other coordinated access systems, we submit that this is not an effective method on how to assess what is needed in the way of Human Resources to get the job done effectively. One must look at what the various functions being carried out by other co-oridnated access systems as compared to Community Housing Access Network. This is a difficult task, as the various coordinated access systems don't do the same thing. Ottawa for example is based solely on the current application form, which is very simplistic, compared to Hamilton. They are just starting to use a building selection form based on a project by project basis once fully implemented they have acknowledged that this will increase their processing time by 1/3.

In addition to the latter, the consultant's report goes on to state "they (the other Services Managers) are starting to conclude that workload for administering the co-ordinated system requires a higher level than they originally anticipated".

We at CHAN have analyzed the rationale and numbers that the consultants employed in their report and take issue with the recommendations. CHAN currently has 4.5 full time staff managing the wait list depository of over 4,800 new application and 6,750 applications in various states of meeting eligibility. The report goes on to state that based one staff person per 1,000 applications the staff compliment currently employed by CHAN is within the average found in other municipalities they surveyed. We submit that after comparing 10 other municipalities who are responsible for the administration of the community based access system by volume of work and not just numbers of applications processed CHAN is currently understaffed (not proposed) for the level of service expected and the volume of work resulting. We have provided the city with a spreadsheet that compares the 10 municipalities with that of Hamilton. The results of this review clearly demonstrate that the current staff level required just to maintain the status quo is 6.5 full time front line staff; 1 full time manager and one full time Administrative Support Staff person if we are to meet the expectations outlined in both the COMMUNITY CONSULTATION COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL HOUSING (CCCOSH) report and the report submitted by the consultants.

To conclude, the RFP that is in the process of being developed by the City must be realistic in its expectations of staffing requirements if the level of service both expected and deserved by the applicants, providers, the community and the city is to be met. We would strongly recommend that a serious focus be given to the staffing requirements of coordinated access.

We would be more than willing to work with city staff as we have done so well in the past in assessing the human resources required if we are to meet the expectations of all who are affected by what we as a sector do.

Sharon:

CHAN is also concerned with the methodology of, and numerous errors in, the consultants' report which has been submitted to this Committee.  We are not going to attempt to identify all of our concerns, but will highlight a few.

First, the consultants' report evaluates both CHAN's (or an organization like CHAN) and the City's ability to provide co-ordinated access to non-profit housing.  Unfortunately, the methods employed for doing so are problematic.  For example, questionnaires were distributed to numerous members of the community and many were completed and returned.  However, respondents were not asked to evaluate CHAN.  Nor were they asked to predict how well they thought the City would provide a co-ordinated access service. The consultants seem to have evaluated the City's ability to provide co-ordinated access solely by reviewing the City's values, vision, mission and goals of other services it offers.  We would argue that this is not an effective way to evaluate any organization's ability to provide a service. We were especially concerned because  none of the concerns that were expressed by members of the community about the City's ability to provide this service made it into the consultants' report.

As I mentioned, there were numerous significant errors in the report.  For example, it was noted in the report that CHAN's primary function was to "assist applicants in finding adequate, affordable housing".  In fact, CHAN's function is to determine the eligibility for applicants to non-profit housing and manage the resulting wait list in compliance with the Social Housing Reform Act and local policies.  It is the function of social service agencies, such as the Housing Help Centre, to help people find adequate and affordable housing.  It is concerning to us that the consultants who prepared an evaluation of CHAN did not seem to understand our function and apparently evaluated us against a function which is not CHAN's.

Given that our concerns regarding the methodology, assumptions and numerous errors in the consultants' report have not been addressed and that report has been submitted to this Committee and will presumably be submitted to City Council shortly, we felt that it was important to raise our concerns in this forum.

Notwithstanding the concerns we have raised, I would like to reiterate what Colin stated at the outset:  we have been pleased that City staff were willing to ask that most of their original recommendations be tabled and would like to thank them for having been willing to work with us to clarify and address our concerns in those original recommendations.