Premier, mayor on same page offers real chance for breakthrough in homeless crisis

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This article was published 12/10/2023 (737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What happens when a big-city mayor and a premier join forces to tackle a humanitarian crisis like Winnipeg’s growing homelessness problem and make it one of their top priorities? The chances of success rise to an entirely new level.

Premier-designate Wab Kinew and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham met this week for the first time since the NDP won the Oct. 3 provincial election. They announced that combating homelessness is at the top of their shared agenda.

It couldn’t come soon enough. The number of unsheltered people living on the streets of Winnipeg, in encampments and bus shacks has never been worse. The underlying mental-health issues, addictions, poverty, racism, domestic trauma and a century-and-a-half of colonialism stares us in the face every time we walk, bike, bus or drive around the city.

It’s a societal failure of epic proportion.

There are solutions. Some have been tried in Winnipeg with great success. Frustratingly, the political will required to take them to the next level has been missing. That may be about to change.

Gillingham travelled to Houston last month to learn more about how that city has reduced homelessness by about two-thirds over the past decade through its The Way Home program.

Houston has been recognized as a leader in implementing what’s known as a “housing-first” strategy, where the unsheltered are provided with homes — usually an apartment — as a first step towards getting them back on their feet.

From there, support services are offered on a voluntary basis to address underlying issues such as addictions, mental health and economic hardship. The evidence shows once people have a roof over their heads, the greater chance they have — and the more motivated they are — to address the underlying issues that may have driven them to the street.

Seems simple enough, but of course it isn’t. The secret to Houston’s success has been getting all stakeholders — not-for-profit social service agencies, private landlords, philanthropists, counties, municipalities and senior levels of government — all rowing in the same direction to overcome the daily hurdles of finding homes for the unsheltered.

It’s hard work. It takes a co-ordinated and collaborative effort on a grand scale to find homes for people, subsidize or pay for them and get them the social and economic supports they need. The amount of political will required is astronomical. But it’s doable. Most importantly, it works.

Manitoba doesn’t have to look far to find evidence of that. Winnipeg was part of a five-city research project between 2009 and 2013 that provided housing and supports to homeless people through a housing-first strategy. It was funded by the federal government through a $110 million grant. The At Home/Chez Soi program produced remarkable results. In the last six months of the program, nearly half of participants remained housed all of the time and 28 per cent some of the time.

It provided homeless people with a new start, a chance to turn their lives around. It didn’t work for everyone, including those who couldn’t, wouldn’t or were not ready to address their underlying problems.

But as Kinew said during the tough-love portion of his victory speech on election night, for those who want to turn their lives around, they can — as he did. The key is somebody has to be there for them when they decide to take the leap.

It’s now up to government, the not-for-profits and the business community to come together and re-ignite this initiative.

Kinew promised during the provincial election to end “chronic homelessness” over eight years. Gillingham made tackling homelessness a major plank in his campaign platform during last year’s municipal election. The mayor made a down payment on that pledge by hiring a senior adviser on homelessness in May, a first for the City of Winnipeg.

If Kinew and Gillingham follow through on their commitments, the combined political will of a premier and a mayor zeroing in on one of the most pressing social and economic issues facing society could be a powerful breakthrough.

Winnipeg has the expertise, the knowledge and the people to make a significant dent in this problem. Still, it would be no easy feat. It would require housing availability, including private apartments and/or social housing, and an all-hands-on deck approach to providing participants with the wraparound services they need to turn their lives around.

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It’s not about the money. Most of the program’s costs are offset by savings in other areas, including policing, paramedic services and hospitalization expenses. The At Home/Chez Soi project in Winnipeg showed the housing-first intervention costs were $18,840 per person per year, while the savings for getting high-needs people into homes were $17,527.

“Every $10 invested in (housing-first) services resulted in an average savings of $9.30 for high need participants,” the 2014 evaluation report found.

What has been missing in this equation is the political will to continue and expand the project and make it a permanent feature of the city and province’s social safety net, as Houston has done.

That missing ingredient may now be on the table.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom Brodbeck is an award-winning author and columnist with over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.

Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press’s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.