Provincial social assistance programs don't provide welfare recipients enough to pay for housing in Brandon, says the Canadian Mental Health Association, so the group is offering to help pay the rent.

Rent costs are increasing and vacancy rates are decreasing in the western Manitoba city of 42,000, but shelter allowances aren't keeping pace, said CMHA regional manager Glen Kruck.

"We are definitely in a housing crisis," Kruck told CBC News.

The mental health association has been lobbying the government to increase welfare rates for years, Kruck said, but now the group has decided if the province won't help, it will step in.

The Brandon association will now pay the difference between social assistance shelter allowance and the true cost of rental housing for its clients, he said.

Vacancy rates nearly 0%

The vacancy rate in Brandon is between zero and 0.2 per cent — much lower than Portage la Prairie, Thompson, or Winnipeg — due to a growing population, according to fall 2007 figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Rents are also increasing; bachelor suite rental averaged $379 per month in October 2007, while a one-bedroom apartment in the Wheat City goes for an average of $488 per month.

But provincial social assistance pays only $271 for the rental costs of a single welfare recipient, the mental health association said.

"In fact, the total budget — food, clothing, shelter, everything — for a single assistance client is $466 — which is $22 short of the housing costs alone," Kruck said.

Kruck expects making up the difference for the association's clients will cost the CMHA about $2,000 per month, which he said would continue until the province increases the rates or "until we run out of money."

"I really encourage the provincial government to take the proud, moral high road on this," he said. "It is absolutely essential that they do what is right."

Provincial review

Grant Doak, assistant deputy minister with Manitoba Family Services and Housing, said the province examines social assistance rates each year and adjusts them as resources allow.

"We recognize investments need to be made and they are being made," he said.

Provincial officials note the province announced $7 million in new funding for people with disabilities earlier this month.

Next year's provincial budget is being prepared now, Doak said, and it will examine the needs of all individuals on income assistance to see if more can be done.

In its ongoing "Raise the Rates" campaign, the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg said this fall that shelter allowances have not increased since 1993, while Manitoba rent increase guidelines have gone up 19 per cent in the same period.