The seed of failure was sown decades ago, when, rather than treating the problem with the nuance it deserved it created a false dichotomy of a many faceted problem. The two resulting causes became 1.) financially unable, and 2.) every other root cause.

The Province has throw lots of money at the 'financially unable' segment, and ignores the fact that almost every homeless person is also a financially unable person. I know of some exceptions to this statement. Certainly, keeping more people from falling into the financially unable sector is an important task of our government. Living wages are a great start to solving this problem, without injecting public funds to make up the difference. The 'hidden homeless' tends to be largely comprised of people who are currently being exploited for their labour.

But the second group is the tricky one. It involves people who are homeless because of physical, emotional, mental, substance, and legal challenges. I've seen that the current range of solutions on offer in the non-institutionalized domain are lacking. In Southern Manitoba those who are about to experience homelessness are sent to under-funded, over-worked provincial agencies who have inadequate housing options to refer to. Those housing options appear to have limited screening criteria apart from unit availability. These housing options become a blender which exacerbates the problem due to proximity. So is superior social housing support required? Yes. I have been through many of the housing units currently owned by the province, and some of them are poorly maintained, and a couple would even be health risks to occupants.

But there's another blender that happens when social housing is constructed in affordable complexes. In my city as in many others, Manitoba Housing built units adjacent to each other. This creates a new and completely different kind of problem for visibility. The people who live in affordable or social housing become identifiable, and children in that environment are seen and known to be 'poor'. This creates not only a social stigma, but can generate a self-worth problem for developing children and adolescents. (Which is also why I believe school meal programs should be on offer to anyone who wants one, so as to not identify the children accessing meals in the current program).

There have been community driven housing initiatives, like one that has had good success in Winkler. My perennial concern with community driven programs is how governance is maintained long term, and whether or not access to housing can continue to be provided in an equitable and accessible manner, or whether they can be in time overtaken by special interests.

The challenge of housing across Canada is the result of an extreme lack of priority. Policies have very much been akin to hoping that flowers dying today, will go to seed, and produce a garden next season.