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Street people will get a home

Some Winnipeg vagrants included in national social research experiment

By: Larry Kusch

21/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 23

Hundreds of Winnipeg street people will be given a place to call home -- part of a study to find out the most effective ways to help the homeless in Canada.

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

Details of the homelessness study, which is also being carried out in four other cities, will be unveiled by government, academics and health and social agencies at a news conference Monday at Winnipeg's Thunderbird House.

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.

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.

The project will require the participation of many city landlords.

"The plan is to integrate (the homeless) in the community, and then services are still provided to them. It's an integrated community project, really," Jayas said.

The U of M's psychiatry and community health sciences departments are involved in the project, as is the university-affiliated Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. Also involved is the University of Winnipeg's Institute of Urban Studies and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Mount Carmel will be dealing with about 100 of the clients with a team that includes a psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse, a family specialist and several other specialists, Edel said.

"The people that we will be working with (will have) the most intense needs," she said.

Other Canadian cities participating in the national "At Home/Chez Soi" project, created by the Canadian Commission on Mental Health, are Moncton, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Unique to the Winnipeg portion of the project is that all the study participants will be aboriginal.

It's estimated there are 350 people living on the streets in Winnipeg and another 1,900 using short-term or crisis shelters. About 70 per cent of these people are aboriginal and as many as half of them live with mental illness.

Ottawa is looking for "evidence-based research" on which to plan social policies for the future, Edel said.

She said the Winnipeg project will offer programs tailored to aboriginal people. "I think it's quite exciting for people to be respected for their beliefs..." Edel said.

Also on Monday, the province is expected to announce the creation of an outreach team to link as many as 300 homeless people a year to housing, social and health services in four communities, including Winnipeg, The Pas, Brandon and Thompson, a provincial spokeswoman said Friday. The initiative is separate from the federal At Home/Chez Soi project.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 21, 2009 A3

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23 Commentscomment icon

I recommend to not house all homeless in one building. Disperse them all over the city so they don't feed hopelessness to each other, they need to be mixed up in a neighborhood where its healthy.

Remember back in grade school where you had a bunch of bad apples in class who ruin class time for people who want to learn. So as soon you split them up the grades for everyone go up and even the bad apples start learning and start getting good grades.

Why study it? Just DO it. Of course people will be better off with a roof over their head. The study's stated goal is asinine. How many big craniums did it take to dream up this waste of money?

Also, if you want to test for race-based differences, don’t you need to stratify the sample geographically in order for the study to be statistically valid? Why only aboriginals in Winnipeg? I agree that stipulations such as this perpetuate the very racism we need to defeat in our society.

Crap like this makes me want to run through the streets screaming!@! I won’t though because I’d just end up consuming mental health resources needed by the study.

Do I read this correctly... 70% of the homeless in this city are aboriginal, and therefore 100% of the test subjects will be aboriginal? I happen to find that very racist against the other 30%, they're being omitted because of their colour (or lack thereof). I'm willing to bet my left arm that if it were 70% caucasian people, they would NOT have been allowed to omit or restrict natives from being part of the study.

Studies are a moot point when we have less than a 1.4% rental vacancy rate for low income housing and at least a three-month waiting list at the rehab.


Keep in mind this is in five cities, only in Winnipeg is it aboriginal only. Probably gives them a good double control group.

Mr. Blah, I am sure that I have alcoholics on my street and in my neighbourhood, as well as many other addictions, so why are these any people any different??? I fully support this venture and have supported like projects before financially.

Yes, they shouldn't just target one group, but it is a university study as well, and to be a true study, they probably feel that if people were all of the same background, it would be a controlled study, ie. the racist comments that are in these comments.

what a one sided article this was!
how much is this program spending on housing compared to red tape. Studying issues is a waste of time and money, what is needed is getting aggressive with this problem, and keep red tape and consultants out of it. People are dying and my bet is the consultant bills will get higher, is this called progress?

What happens when the 3 year program is over? Nice having you but out you go? Enjoy remembering what it was like having a roof over your head.

GREAT IDEA - but lets make it 1000 people -- drive down higgins and turn south onto princess - 300 princess is shiloam mission - at 9 pm every night there is a line up of a hundred + plus people that deserve a better life than this ..

I'm not at all surprised by the amount of hateful comments here. I believe and you probably do too, that no one deserves to live on the streets. I do wish this program wasn't just open to aboriginals. But aren't they the ones we say "dirty" the streets. The streets of Winnipeg are clean, its the mentality of most Winnipeggers that need cleanin' up.

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