Street people will get a home

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