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Hundreds attend homelessness program launch

By: Staff Writer

23/11/2009 1:25 PM | Comments: 34

Spirit Sands Singers kicked off a news conference at Thunderbird House this morning on the launch of Home Chez Soi, a Canada Mental Health Commission study that will try to find the best mix of housing a support for homeless Aboriginal people in Manitoba.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Spirit Sands Singers kicked off a news conference at Thunderbird House this morning on the launch of Home Chez Soi, a Canada Mental Health Commission study that will try to find the best mix of housing a support for homeless Aboriginal people in Manitoba.

WINNIPEG - A new national program that will provide a roof over the heads of more than 1,300 people — including 300 in Winnipeg — was officially launched today.

A couple of hundred people, including Aboriginal leaders, academics, social agency staff and community activists, crowded into Thunderbird House for a two-hour ceremony to launch the Winnipeg component of the combined housing program and research project.

Winnipeg is one of five Canadian cities participating in the $110 million federally funded effort, called At Home/Chez Soi, organized by the Mental Health Commission in Canada.

Researchers connected to the project — including those at the University of Manitoba and University of Winnipeg — are testing a U.S.-based service model in which homeless people are provided with a place to live in advance of receiving other supports, such as addictions programs.

Unique to the Winnipeg component is that the approximately 600 participants, including 300 members of a control group, will be Aboriginal.

It’s estimated that 70 per cent of the homeless population in Winnipeg is Aboriginal.

"At the end of the day, it will be a good thing to see more than 1,000 Canadians in stable housing, surrounded by the supports they need," said Jino Distasio, director of the U of W’s Institute of Urban Studies.

The Mental Health Commission of Canada launched the program at a news conference today. The purpose of the research is to determine whether it’s better to provide street people with homes of their own, along with counselling and other social supports, or to try treating them first before finding them housing, which is what occurs today.

Some 600 homeless aboriginals are being recruited to participate in the project, and 300 of them will be given a place to live.

The new model of providing the homeless with places to live ahead of treatment has shown promise in places such as New York, said Digvir Jayas, vice-president of research at the University of Manitoba.

The U of M is helping carry out the research project in Winnipeg. Half the participants in the $150-million national study will be provided a furnished room or apartment, while the other half will act as a control group. Researchers will track the progress of those given homes for four years and compare it to that of people who remain on the streets.

Betty Edel, executive director of Mount Carmel Clinic, one of several participating agencies, said it only makes sense to provide homes up front to people who require help with sobriety and/or mental health issues.

"How can you say to someone who is homeless, ‘Well, we’ll give you a place (to live) if you sober up.’ Well, a lot of times that’s their coping mechanism because of all the fear and all the strife on the streets," Edel said Friday.

"What has been proven to work is that if someone has their own place and feels safe and secure... their basic need is met, so they can start thinking of other areas in their life," she said.

History

Updated on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 1:26 PM CST:
Adds details from today's press conference

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34 Commentscomment icon

@mbsmiles:

Do you write for the National Post? Have you written any speeches for Sarah Palin?

To kay and carol Why do you feel such moods on a bloggers executive site? Is this the messages sent to each others worries?
Well Carol The birth right is given, Kay, I would ask nor more than to suggest your skill and outstanding wit, If i did read carfully enough I am pleased that you addressed this to carol, I know education is for all Kay and you have the very same goals as great leaders,your efforts too. Well I must say this again Kay and to the peoples of Canada keep up the good work We all can make a differance. Carol too, she can make bloggers more rich than one's expectations of the digital news ages begin at new hieghts. She would be good to be in media coattails or something we find for her and may be her generated followers as well. Thank you both of yous. Oh yes the executive site is just a blogger righting what we see.

I apologize, to the peoples we see as useless, I never been allocated to anger, nor grief in peoples belives of one another. Just by reading the concerns. Our dollars, are to be spent, were and whom can qualify to access the study funds. I have great heart felt concerns to all the peoples of many. Years before an advanced culture needed to explore and expand, thus the advanced had done so. We on this side in our early days were not so crowded and so thirty year war educated, but awareness to the such later on began to emerge in many forms of communicating indifferances once again. Well today, is nor given your flight to text, policies and education reforms.
The crime, the unsettled housing markets, peoples needs to address every concerning practices through a blogger effort. Why? Peoples, I say it once again, pick a strong leader that knows peoples needs, the mass of the populations is at the grieving point to address this. So once again we our allocated to be looked after, promised by the peoples of Canada in comfort, again to fend for our selfs? The skills of our area at one time were far allocated, such as to the needs, tools and the right environments needed to sustain a once not so advanced cultures of the days, it conviently may be thought of as this knowledge of great skills and the strong will to survive, and sustain, a lentgh of generations expected to be fullfiled indeed been taken for granted, What did we have to work with? Now the people skills will help us Yes!

THE STUDIES As I assure this will be good, why weigh the possible to a concern with news? So much is needed to address people in the field of our generations now, well if blogging comments seems to pay a sensible meaning in community issues for the long awaited resualts, well then lets us as we do the job shall we, we all want to have the prosperities of pleasures and abundances of great leadships in the eyes of the roles our country has chosen to listen, well? did we not ask for resovle in solutions? Always do somthing on some one's eleses recognition text campains.
any way more of the less, Goverment did the right thing to allocate a recognized service provider to do the needs of the peoples whom now may have the chance as we all do, to become more productive as from what the cry was all about, and to let us see that everbody has the need to be seen heard and assisted.
My goodness with the generation x of the third, maybe just maybe, studies can include taking away x-boxes and other new age of digital baby sitter equipment.
Angery? it get better not worst at the halfs, I see more than most. Just not enough to promote opportunity with a call in the first place, so give your student bodies a given chance to study these needs, or let me study them right here on the blogg page.

I am a little uncomfortable with this kind of research being done with such a large population. I am hoping that the funds and efforts will not only shed more light on the issue of homeless, but if the study proves successful, maybe then, we could look at other pockets of our society who live on the fringes...those with mental health issues, seniors, etc.

I'm with Carol. If they had included a too large percentage to white/black races there would have been an uproar. Are we getting seperate studies for White people and another for Black? That's segretation and it IS racist. I am appalled. How is our community to learn to embrace the different cultures if they're being treated differently??? It's beyond disgusting!

"110 million federally funded effort" or "150 million national study", which is it? 40 million is a rather large difference. Even @ the lower figure, that's a lot of money to take 1300 people off the streets for a few years. I'd be guessing about 20% goes to the housing & the remainder to the researchers.

600 people are being recruited in Winnipeg & 1/2 of those receive a home. Are the other 1/2 (control group) receiving any benefit like an equivalent amount of money to see if they can manage on their own if given funding? What's in it for them & why would they volunteer if receiving nothing?

If they insist on spending that kind of money on research, how about doing it on our pensioners, many of who were the working poor & are barely surviving now. They built this country but are cast off now that their contributions are finished. We'd rather fund those that never made a contribution.

How do you qualify?

Please Carol READ READ READ!!!! ....read it a few times if you have to before you understand.

@Proud:
Researchers will track the progress of those given homes for four years and compare it to that of people who remain on the streets.

This ain't "aircraft engineering", not by a long shot.

I'll say it again, in this instance, the research is an idiotic waste of resources, not the least of which is money.

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