Flin Flon’s low-income and homeless population could be the community’s future.
Last week, several local landlords gathered over coffee around a table at the Friendship Centre to discuss the challenges they face.
The challenges, it seems, often relate to transient and low-income tenants, resulting in rent often being overdue, and properties being left damaged. Some of these tenants simply never learned what it means to be a ‘good tenant’. Some of them have a reputation that precedes them.
Challenging or not, many of these tenants are here to stay. And that could be a good thing.
An idea of considerable foresight was floated around the table: If it’s true that 500 jobs in Flin Flon will be lost as the result of Hudbay layoffs in the coming years, the population of the city will drop substantially. If this community wishes to remain a community, Flin Flon’s low-income and homeless populations will need stable, long-term roofs over their heads.
At least 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness each year —that’s about 0.6 per cent of Canada’s population. Flin Flon experiences a homelessness rate of a whopping 1.7 per cent — an incredible number for a place with a small population to begin with.
Why does this small, remote community harbour a homeless population of more than double the average of the rest of the country?
It’s a multifaceted issue. There’s basically a big ’No Vacancy’ sign on Flin Flon’s rental market, with availability being next to nothing. The local, provincially administered affordable housing is consistently full. No new houses are being built, with the vast uncertainty of the community’s future.
Still, people travel here from outlying communities (53 per cent of participants in a 2014 study of homelessness in Flin Flon identified as being from Saskatchewan, making it a regional issue) for opportunity. According to Jason Straile, housing coordinator with the Flin Flon Aboriginal Friendship Centre, that opportunity often doesn’t exist, and incoming residents end up working the lowest paying jobs, or none at all.
A person working 44 hours a week, 50 weeks of the year on minimum wage makes $24,200 annually before deductions. The median income in Flin Flon is $45,648, but this means little if well-paying jobs are not available or if residents don’t have the skills to fill them, and it’s reasonable to expect that number to drop with the loss of much of the community’s well-paid workforce.
So what are local agencies to do to address the challenge of homelessness on a local level? It’s a question they are still trying to answer. The idea of buying buildings put up for tax sale by the City and turning them into low-income housing has been raised, though this will take time and presents a new set of challenges, financial and otherwise.
But why should it be only interested agencies — people and organizations who already have a stake in this game — who search for a solution?
It’s easy, while everything is still well and good, for the general population to turn a blind eye to the issue of homelessness and lack of available and affordable long-term accommodation in Flin Flon. But when the population drops, as is anticipated, those who remain in the community will be looking to fill that void, and it will likely be residents on low income who make this city their home. When that happens, these issues will shift from being “someone else’s problem” to issues that affect every aspect of the community, and all of its members.
As a whole, Flin Flon needs to start looking forward and finding housing solutions for this segment of our population, and find ways to integrate them comfortably into the weave of this place. These issues are community dilemmas – they will affect all residents to some length – and as such, they need to be addressed as a community.
