"A search for understanding: A proposal for researching Native homelessness in Northern Manitoba"

Abstract

Poverty has been a prevalent issue throughout world history. Despite the United Nation's opinion that we have the best quality of life, Canada cannot say that it is the exception to this rule. Many people live in abject poverty here. Without an official poverty line to help determine the level of poverty, estimating the actual number of poor is a contentious issue. Most official reports base their findings on Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut Offs (LICO's). For example, the National Council of Welfare estimate that in 1997 just over five million Canadians, or 17.2% of the population, were living in poverty (Silver,2000). Such findings generally underestimate the number of poor Canadians as they usually do not include data on Aboriginal people living on reserves, residents of the Yukon, Nunavut, and North West Territories, and people who live in institutions. The costs surrounding poverty are enormous. For example, population health studies show a strong correlation between poverty and people's health. They argue that poverty contributes to many of our social ills, affecting individuals, families, communities and society as a whole (for example, see Layton, 2000). Though there are discrepancies in the actual rates and effects of poverty, poverty rate and population health studies have one major commonality, they indicate that poverty is increasing (Ross, Scott, & Smith, 2000). At the margins of this growing trend, one often finds the homeless.