Nick Noorani Website

Look at homelessness this way: not by considering what will happen to those people who line up outside emergency shelters each night, but from the point of view of refugees and immigrants to Canada.
Each year for the past several Canada has received 250,000 immigrants and a pile of refugees on top of that. Their desire to find a home and the benefits that brings to their lives are no different than the street people that have been so much in the news.
Between 2001 and 2005, the federal government spent $15 million for a unique study which looked at the experience of 12,000 of those immigrants and refugees.

Statistics Canada’s census gives us information once every five years. This study selected a group of immigrants and refugees who first formally landed in the country in 2000/2001. They were checked after six months, then after two years and then after four years.
The research organization called Metropolis got its mitts on this data, and UBC geographer Daniel Hiebert co-authored one of a half dozen studies mining the data. Hiebert was interested in how successful this group was in achieving what is generally regarded as the North American dream of home ownership.
He reminds us of what others have written about the importance of stable housing and home ownership: “A progressive housing career is a key contributing factor to the successful integration of immigrants into Canadian society.”
What is interesting to note is that about 70 per cent of immigrants and refugees chose to settle in the three major metropolitan areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. While Montreal has a relatively high vacancy rate and low property values, the same cannot be said for Toronto or Vancouver, which has the highest housing costs in the country.
In spite of that, the findings are remarkable. Hiebert told me he was most impressed with what must be a “massive transfer of wealth” to Canada. Within six month of arriving here, 20 per cent of all immigrants have purchased a home. And six per cent of all immigrants had houses with no mortgage on them.
The study shows that home purchasing continues to rocket ahead very early in the immigrant experience. After two years, 33 per cent were home owners. By the end of four years over 50 per cent of these newcomers owned their own home. Hiebert points out that this percentage of home ownership at the end of that period matched the rate of home ownership among native born Canadians.
This, by the way, was happening as housing prices across the country were rising quickly. The longer you waited, the more you paid.
Of course, overall, refugees have the toughest time economically when they start to make their way here. They often flee deplorable conditions elsewhere and arrive with nothing to their names. Even so, after four years in Canada, 20 per cent had purchased a home.
Of course, there are differences in home-ownership based on the class of immigrant. Business class immigrants are at the top, followed by skilled workers and then those who come as part of the family class.
There were roughly two strategies employed. Wealthier immigrants were able to plunk down the money needed and carry whatever mortgage existed. Others, primarily South Asians in Vancouver, increased the number of income earners in each house, which became a multi-generational, extended family dwelling. Immigrants of European origin were more likely to live in single-family settings.
This study took place during a time of economic prosperity and relatively low unemployment in Canada.
And Hiebert cautions that amidst the good news, there is still a significant “fraction” of immigrants who did not succeed and instead faced crowded conditions and an uncertain housing future.
agarr@vancourier.com
© Vancouver Courier 2009
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