Abe Oudshoorn recently argued that success, rather than issues like addiction or mental illness, is driving visible homelessness across many Canadian cities.
“When we look at the data, you get some really strange phenomena where perhaps more poor cities, cities with a lower income across the board, may have less homelessness than rich cities like the Torontos and the Vancouvers and the Calgarys of the world,” he said.
“When you look even globally, the rates of mental illness tend to be pretty much the same across high income nations, around kind of a 20 to 22 per cent lifetime expectancy.”
“Yet the rates of homelessness in these countries differ drastically. And so it’s actually not the mental illness that’s causing the homelessness, what’s happening is things like mental illness, poverty, addiction are discriminating for who will be homeless.”
Oudshoorn is managing editor of The International Journal on Homelessness, as well as a nurse and associate professor at Western University in London, Ontario.
“What’s causing homelessness is that housing is expensive, rare and in high demand. And what happens then is cities that are successful, so cities that are wealthy, that are growing, that tend to have high employment, end up being the cities with the highest rates of homelessness because their housing prices are so high.”
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