When people have secure, healthy, appropriate, and affordable housing they are able to succeed in most other aspects of their lives.

Housing provides a base from which people can keep structure in their lives and move ahead with other responsibilities and activities.

Housing needs vary widely for people:

• a single adult may need a small bachelor appartment at a price appropriate to the person's income;
• a family may need enough rooms for children and the appliances to store and prepare food properly;
• a person living with a mental or physical health condition may need specialized facilities or regular support from specialized caregivers.

The most visible evidence of housing insecurity is people who are absolutely homeless.

Perhaps they are living in a doorway or with a little campsite in the river valley, or at best accessing one of the overnight shelters for a bunk or a mat on a floor.

Sadly, in Edmonton the regular counts of such people have grown over the past decade, from less than 900 people in such a state on an average day to more than 3000, a figure that includes hundreds of children.

But this represents only a small percentage of those whose lives are being affected by inadequate housing.

There is a shortage of many thousands of units of low-income affordable housing for people who simply had small incomes and cannot afford market-level rents.

When they do not have affordable housing the only choice often is to stay in living situations that are not appropriate.

They might be too crowded, for example, or without quiet places for children to sleep.

They may be spending most of their income on rent and let other needs suffer.

The wait lists for a very limited number of low-income housing are years long.

Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, the community organization that presents HomeFest, holds a memorial each January to celebrate the lives of homeless people who have died over the previous year.

They died for reasons connected to homelessness or other housing problems.

The number of people remembered each year has steadily grown.

Historically Canada did not have a problem of homelessness and large numbers of people poorly housed.

This problem began in the early 1990s with massive cutbacks to housing by the federal and provincial governments.

They had been investing for decades in the construction of low-income and special needs housing.

But those cutbacks, combined with the wide-scale deinstitutionalization of people with mental illnesses the growing demographic of seniors, and the economic boom has meant that housing options are not available and many are no longer able to maintain the housing they had lived in during earlier years.

Not surprisingly, the for-profit sector did not take up the growing shortfall since such housing is a low-profit enterprise at best.

The strong economy encouraged activity in more profitable construction.

During the past year both the City of Edmonton and the Province of Alberta have released 10 year plans to end homelessness.

But the lack of adequate investment of funding by both the province and the federal government make it difficult to enact plans.

The City of Edmonton plan only addresses the absolute homeless. All others who are living in bad housing situations, squeezing in with others or spending nearly all their income for a place, are going to continue to suffer.

Housing problems affect some groups more than others: aboriginal peoples, new immigrants, women with children, people with mental illness or addictions, large families, and older people.

HomeFest, now in its seventh year, is dedicated to raising awareness of the housing crisis in Edmonton.

Only when citizens make clear to elected politicians that they want money committed to housing security will this be a priority.

HomeFest seeks to help people be better informed so they can make their voices heard by these politicians more effectively and forcefully.