Giving Compass' Take:

• Damaris Rose presents possible policy solutions for Canada's refugee housing challenges as they work to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees. 

• What role can funders play in increasing housing opportunities and community integration for refugees? 

• Read more refugee inclusion. 

Canada undertook an extraordinary humanitarian operation in 2015, committing to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees in the space of just four months. While Canada has long had a strong commitment to refugee resettlement, this program was unprecedented in scale, reaching numbers not seen since the Indochinese emergency resettlement operation in 1979–80. Although Canada has a well-developed settlement and integration service sector and longstanding experience with resettlement, the pace and scale of the Syrian arrivals and their larger-than-expected families strained the system.

Locating and securing suitable housing was among the most critical, and difficult, tasks service providers and sponsors faced. Housing for refugee newcomers must not only be clean, safe, and affordable, but also located near critical services such as job training and language courses, as well as suitable job opportunities and, in some cases, specialized health services. Syrian refugees and their case managers and sponsors faced several challenges finding suitable housing that met these needs:

  • Lack of affordable housing. Syrian newcomers entered a housing market that was already very tight, particularly at the lower-cost end of the market. Social housing is available only to those with the most extreme needs, and most refugee newcomers must find housing on the private market using a monthly allowance provided by the Canadian government or private sponsor groups. Long before the Syrian operation, evaluations of Canada’s Resettlement Assistance Program had demonstrated that the level of housing benefits provided to government-assisted refugees was not keeping pace with rental costs and was insufficient to meet their housing needs.
  • Limited housing for large families. Among Syrian families resettled by the Canadian government between November 2015 and July 2016, 40 percent had six or more members. However, rental housing that can accommodate families with four or more children is generally scarce in Canada. As a result, much of the existing housing stock that service providers relied on was not suitable for these newcomers.
  • Mismatch between where housing and services are available. Integration and settlement services for refugees and immigrants have tended to be delivered primarily in larger cities in Canada. These cities offer public transportation, specialized health care, and often, diaspora communities from refugees’ origin countries who can provide additional support to newcomers. More affordable and larger housing units are often available in smaller cities, outer suburbs, and rural communities, but the limited availability of services in these locations has meant that refugees and settlement.

Despite the constraints settlement workers and sponsors faced, all Syrian refugees resettled as part of the 2015–16 program were able to move into permanent housing within a few months of arrival in Canada, and most were able to move in much sooner. The speed and effectiveness of this response on the part of settlement workers helping government-assisted refugees was the result of several factors. First, they were able to build on and expand strong, pre-existing relationships with landlords and other local stakeholders. By engaging in an unprecedented level of planning and coordination with these stakeholders early on in the resettlement operation, settlement workers were able to expand the stock of available housing to meet new needs through additional contacts with new landlords, nonprofit housing associations, and social housing providers.

Settlement workers also tapped into voluntary and private support that was extremely forthcoming during the Syrian operation. A Welcome Fund for Syrian Refugees, established by Community Foundations of Canada at the request of the federal government to manage and direct corporate donations, provided a temporary rental supplement to high-needs Syrian refugees, which helped some to overcome the initial housing affordability gap. In some cities, municipalities and local nonprofits set up housing portals that allowed private individuals and landlords to offer suitable and affordable housing to newcomers. Elsewhere, settlement workers enlisted volunteers with a strong knowledge of local neighborhoods to mentor refugees, alongside professional case workers, in finding permanent housing.

Finally, voluntary support and action at the federal level allowed refugees to be resettled to an expanded range of locations. Housing offers made by private individuals through local housing portals allowed settlement workers to place refugees in neighborhoods that otherwise might not have been accessible. To ease housing pressures in larger cities, the federal government also began offering settlement services in seven new cities across Canada, many of them smaller cities that offered promising employment opportunities for low- and semi-skilled workers but that had not previously been considered for resettlement because they lacked settlement services.