Why Core Housing Need is a Poor Metric to Measure Outcomes of Canada's National Housing Strategy /

On June 1, 2017 in a speech to the Toronto Club, CMHC president Evan Siddall provided an update on the steps to date and publicly articulated the two planned outcome targets for the NHS: • a 50 percent reduction in chronic and episodic homelessness • a 50 percent reduction in core housing need of renters. [...] A majority of renters in core need depend on welfare income but the structure of welfare benefits seriously distorts the measurement of housing need. [...] Why core housing need is a poor metric to measure outcomes of Canada's national housing strategy June 2017 Page 6 w. hy income assistance (welfare) distorts core need The first factor is the very high proportion of core need households that rely on income assistance: 56 percent among non-seniors. [...] In all cases, the relative size of the housing component, versus the basic living allowance portion of the total benefit pay- ment, leaves the household paying more than 30 percent. [...] Moreover, a perverse outcome is that if a province increases the size of the housing component in the total benefit calculation, the share of total benefit used for housing will increase to a higher ratio.