Homelessness Governance in

Canada

OMC principles in action

Carey Doberstein PhD. candidate University of Toronto carey.doberstein@utoronto.ca

Homelessness Governance in Canada

1. Brief history of policy context 2. Existing OMC features in homelessness governance 3. Differentiate Vancouver and Toronto modes of

governance 4. Are OMC principles the solution to current

challenges? 5. Consider the feasibility and desirability of specific

OMC-style reforms

Homelessness policy context

Federal government entered homelessness policy domain in 1999:

1999-2006: National Homelessness Initiative (NHI)

2007-2014: Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS)

• Does not represent all the policy activity (or even the majority of spending in some cities), but is the key site of multi-level governance

National Homelessness Initiative (NHI):

1999-2006

• Prior to 1999 there is no federal government role

in homelessness policy • What happened in 1999?

▫ Golden Report in Toronto; homelessness declared national disaster; FCM lobbying; federal budget balanced

• Provinces initially unenthusiastic and suspicious of this intervention

NHI/HPS features

• Federal government engagement directly with cities and communities (effectively bypassing the provincial governments)

• 50% funding from HRSDC; rest from city, province, civil society

• Community required to draft ‘Community Plan’ with the input of civil society groups; must create a ‘Community Advisory Board’ (CAB)

• Flexibility regarding institutions for decision-making and accountability

‘Community Entity’ model: ex. Toronto

‘Shared-delivery’ model: ex. Vancouver (until 2010)

NHI/HPS through the OMC lens

Similarities to OMC

•Voluntary

•Flexible to local and regional needs

•Common goals are advanced via federal priority setting in area without explicit federal role

•Coordination of activity (top-down and bottom up coordination)

•Civil society involvement in planning and decision-making

•Evaluation of action, best practices, celebration of successes

Differences from OMC

•Goal is inter-local coordination, not national coordination (Vancouver and adjacent cities coordinate; not Vancouver and Toronto)

•Timetables, targets, evaluation of impact of action is locally driven; no national targets

•Deliberative activity is at the bottom, not the top (as in OMC)

•Cooperation and coordination achieved through financial incentives

Vancouver and Toronto multi-level networks

Vancouver Toronto

Catchment area Region City

Network membership All levels of government, service providers, advocacy groups in RSCH

Service providers, advocacy groups in CRG

Effective decision-making authority

Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness

City of Toronto

Role of civil society Deliberative governance

Consultative

Stage of involvement by civil society

All stages: strategic planning, funding allocation, evaluation

Strategic planning

Questions we were ask to consider:

• What is the steering mode and what triggers action?

• What modes of governance are used—hierarchy, negotiation, competition, or coordination?

• Where does leadership come from and what roles do different actors play?

• What rules govern actors’ behaviour? Has authority been moved upwards or downwards? Who is accountable to whom?

• How effective is overall coordination?

Steering mode and action triggers

• Offers of funds from federal government triggered action and operate as the steering mode

▫ Requirement of Community Plan which describes homelessness in the area, gaps in services, and priorities for action-- formulated with input of civil society groups

• Other factors that influence behaviour?

▫ Limited external pressure (name and shame); national evaluations celebrate specific successes within communities, but do not shame underperformers

▫ Mutual learning and policy transfer is significant in Greater Vancouver

• Modes of governance:

▫ Hierarchy is only relevant in setting the stage for action

▫ Competition is not a feature in the NHI/HPS

▫ Negotiation and coordination are the primary modes of governance in both Vancouver and Toronto

Leadership and roles

Vancouver • Leadership comes from administrators; collective leadership has

emerged • Selected stakeholders are part of the core network, involved at every

step, including decision-making; they influence each part of the cycle

• Stakeholders are mobilized by invitation to the RSCH or application to it; business interests and youth most difficult to sustain involvement

Toronto • Key decisions are taken by city administrators and city council;

limited collective leadership development (very low profile) • Stakeholders involved in the strategic planning stage; determination

of priorities, not decision-making • Stakeholders selected by City administrators

Shared authority and accountability

• Federal govt writes the rules regarding who can make funding recommendations, the accountabilities and liabilities with each option

• Vancouver took the less common route (shared delivery model)

• Authority has moved downwards and outwards to the RSCH in Vancouver

• Accountability rested formally and legally with HRSDC; big accountability questions during the first 10 years of operation

• Toronto exhibits more traditional relationship to civil society; consultation separate from decision-making

How effective is coordination?

Vancouver

• the RSCH has caused previously inert city councils to create their own homelessness plans, which are consistent and feed into the Regional Plan

• RSCH activity reveals gaps in existing policy and programs

• What are the concrete effects on policy? = my dissertation

• Broad impact: initiated action across the region; keeps issue on the local agenda via collective leadership; substantive involvement of Aboriginal stakeholders; deliberative and horizontal; civil society involvement is sustained, serious and morale is high

How effective is coordination?

Toronto

• Service provision is coordinated internally

• The Community Entity model prevented the multi-level network from institutionalization, growth in public profile and ability to keep the issue on the local agenda to the same extent as in Vancouver

• Civil society groups and stakeholders have expressed dissatisfaction with their merely consultative role; input closed at the decision-making stage; interest and participation in CRG has diminished

Successes and Challenges to modes of governance

Vancouver Toronto

Successes •Substantive civil society involvement

•Raises profile of homelessness

•Triggered additional regional policy activity

•Clear accountability

•No conflicts of interest in decision-making

•Coordinated from the perspective of City officials

Challenges •Blurred accountability

•Potential conflicts of interest

•Administrative fatigue

•City of Vancouver occasionally goes alone

•Civil society frustration

•Unable to sustain homelessness on the local agenda

•No regional response to homelessness

OMC to the rescue?

Does the OMC framework help to overcome the challenges of the NHI/HPS model?

▫ Vancouver and Toronto demonstrate necessary trade-offs (ex. substantive civil society involvement vs. clear lines of accountability)

▫ At the local level, successes and challenges reflect choices based on local context

It is at aggregating the local level to the national where OMC principles can make their contribution

▫ The component parts of the national response to homelessness are weakly integrated

Potential for OMC-style reforms

• NHI/HPS is somewhere in between the old federal leadership and funding of welfare state, and the new EU-style MLG which includes civil society actors

• The ‘problem’ in homelessness is that adjacent localities have differential services, not that Vancouver and Toronto are not coordinating their services

• NHI/HPS designed to trigger local action, encourage levels of government and civil society to collaborate on projects

• Three possibilities: (i) performance measures; (ii) information sharing; and (iii) local contribution to national policy development

OMC: performance measures

• National evaluations of the NHI and HPS have only ever highlighted examples of successes, not failures

• The innovation from HPS as it replaced the NHI was to introduce targets, reporting, tracking, and measures for success

▫ Reaction from communities: mostly negative

▫ Nothing stopping federal government from naming and shaming; cities are desperate for funds

• RSCH considered a report card for the member cities, but decided against it as it seemed ‘too political’

OMC: performance measures

• Reporting at the national level is designed to support the continued role of the federal government in homelessness, not to assess cities against each other

• Community Plan Assessments aggregated to create a national narrative, not a comparative study of approaches, successes and failures in each community

• Data is perhaps the biggest challenge in this domain

• Data is often unavailable for important performance measures, or difficult to interpret, and not compared against each community

• If homelessness rises in a jurisdiction over a 3 year period, does that mean the wrong policy choices or priorities have been implemented? Not necessarily

OMC: information sharing

• National meetings of Chairs of the Community Advisory Boards (CABs) to exchange best practices and new ideas

• Regional CABs meet more frequently; info flow is HRSDC-out, not CAB-in

• National Advisory Board of CABs proposal: for a sustained, informal network of CABs across the country in order to share learnings; no funding offered by govt

• Bottom-up proposal by communities, not HRSDC

• Local reaction: needs to be more than information sharing; no HPS funds should be used

OMC: local influence on national policy

• Local level policy ideas and preferences are not channeled into federal decision-making process regarding over-arching policy

▫ Edict is laid down on often uncomfortably narrow timelines

▫ CABs are simply informed as to what the high-level priorities are for a given phase of the program

▫ Mandated reporting requirements do not appear to influence federal decision-making at strategic level

• CAB Chairs could be selected as part of a larger advisory committee on the direction of HPS at the federal level

Conclusion

• NHI/HPS already shares many OMC features

• Performance measures are especially challenging in this field; unclear if adding a competitive dimension is feasible or desirable

• Opportunities for national network of CABs in HPS; how to get it off the ground?

• Institutionalize a local-to-national level advisory process on direction of HPS