The Housing Committee reviewed its terms of reference and these are outlined below along with an indication of how the terms of reference relate to our Committee activities during the past year.

1.	"Monitor existing and developing shelter programs used by persons with a disability." Our chief concern is to ensure that programs are accessible to people with all types of disabilities. As a result of our regular liaison with the West Broadway Stakeholders Group, we keep track of how well people with mental health disabilities are being served through ongoing housing developments in Winnipeg primarily carried out by community-based groups in conjunction with government. We also determined how city access policies figure in a land donation to Habitat for Humanity. We spent an hour with their Managing Director, Sandy Hopkins, at our March meeting and were impressed with their growing commitment to accessibility.
2.	“Identify and document deficiencies within these shelter programs from a consumer/user perspective.” 2010 marked a reprise of our committee’s housing survey of ten years ago. Although many hours were spent revamping the survey, it dealt with the same topics as its predecessor. We expanded its scope to involve more senior’s organizations. This was primarily due to our involvement with Age and Opportunity’s Project Coordinator – Housing Program, Deborah Lorteau. Deborah joined our committee mid-year. One idea we had was to have all data collated and analyzed for the AGM forum in June. Due to logistics, this was not possible. The work will be carried out with the support of committee member Wendy Raths from Manitoba Housing and a summer student. We sent out 200 surveys with a closing date of March 31 and received 41 returns. That compares to 50 with 21 returns in 2001.
3.	“Research Shelter Programs from other jurisdictions, when necessary or requested, to determine and develop necessary program enhancement/alternatives.” We do not devote a lot of time to this area but it does arise in relation to Manitoba Housing policy and practice. This is due to the similarity of disability-related challenges from one urban setting to another. Landlord/tenant co-operation in managing the bedbug pest situation was an instance where we asked some guests from Manitoba Housing about accommodating residents with physical disabilities who must comply with bed bug orders.
4.	“Develop strategies for change and seek consultation with the appropriate legislators to implement the proposed changes.” To this end, we ensure our positions are well-formulated and our voices heard at events like the City’s Speak Up Winnipeg consultations and the February forum sponsored by the Disability Issues Office that examined a potential Manitobans with disabilities act.
5.	“Propose new Shelter Programs designed to fill gaps within the existing system and seek consultation with legislators to implement these programs.” For Manitoba in 2010, the real concern is more about whether current programs are being used to their potential or that they might even be phased out entirely, rather than a presupposed requirement on our part to be forever blue-skying over possible new initiatives. For example, we hear that the Federal Government has not yet renewed their share of the Housing and Homelessness Initiative which has been of great assistance in neighbourhood reclamation projects and similar ventures across Canada. It won’t be good for anyone experiencing poverty if this work is left only to the other levels of government and community groups to carry forward. Similarly, there’s the chronic problem of a program where the qualifying ceiling is so low that relatively few seniors are poor enough to use it to make their dwellings accessible. And co-op development (a boon for many with disabilities) is stalled because a high percentage of the up-front costs are required from the would-be applicants.
6.	“Liaise with other constituencies who have consumers that could benefit from or use these Shelter Programs for their membership.” As mentioned above, Deborah Lorteau’s inclusion is both welcome and a natural step for us to take, given the extent to which our discussions so often focus on seniors with disabilities. Non-accessible features combined with the paucity of systems for the provision of appropriate care could become costly and troublesome features of tomorrow’s communities if we don’t recognize and deal with them immediately. CCDS’s collaborative promotional work with the U. of M.’s Barrier Free Design group on behalf of visitability is a good sign that academia is thinking on the same lines we are and that government and private policy makers will renew their energies in this area.

A bright spot for us this year happened when Bob MacFadyen, during his last meeting informed us that by the end of January, the Portable Benefits Program for mental health survivors—providing 100 of them with up to $200 they can use for rent in the private market—would be fully subscribed. It’s great to see this sub-population being so programmatically well-served for a change. We miss Bob, but likely not as much as they do at the Winnipeg Canadian Mental Health Association.

Without being exhaustive, we think this is a fair run-down as to what has engaged us over the past year. We continually fret over our current limitations—should we be larger, a lot larger; should we seek members from outside Winnipeg, more reps from other disability organizations? Likely we won’t change much unless the nature of our business warrants it. Once we are satisfied that our research project has been completed, we would welcome any opportunity provided by the League to do a show-and-tell that would be sure to generate much good discussion, no matter what the setting.

We are a lively little committee that can go off on tangents at the drop of a hat. Our focus is due largely to the dedication, diverse backgrounds and broad knowledge of our individual members -thanks to you all. Special thanks to Bob MacFadyen for his many years of commitment to our housing committee and we hope he enjoys his retirement. Dan Halechko took over from Bob to offer the committee necessary secretarial support. Thanks to Wendy Raths at Manitoba Housing for offering the departments services to analyze our Housing Survey data and put it into a presentable format. We extend a big thanks to the MLPD staff for all their support in making our meetings so successful.