Siloam Mission hopes grim homeless census will spark gov’t action

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This article was published 26/11/2015 (3607 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The release of grim statistics about who Winnipeg’s homeless are and how they wound up on the street will hopefully spur the government into action, says Siloam Mission chief executive officer Garry Corbett.

On Wednesday, Winnipeg’s first ever homeless census was released. It revealed of the 1,700 people who experienced a type of homelessness in Winnipeg in a 24-hour period, 475 were considered “absolutely homelessness” — meaning they were on the streets or staying at an emergency shelter. More than 75 per cent of those surveyed identified as indigenous.

“We’re hoping this will now provide an impetuous for the three levels of government to follow through on the 10-year plan to end homelessness,” Corbett told the Free Press.

Corbett said figures are likely higher on any given night, as the 300 volunteers who combed the streets of Winnipeg on Oct. 25 wouldn’t have been able to search every “bus shelter or doorway” in the city.

On an average nightly basis, Siloam Mission must turn away about 40 people after their 110-bed emergency shelter on Princess Street fills up.

There are two other shelters in the city — the Salvation Army, which has 250 beds, and the Main Street Project, which is the only emergency shelter that accepts intoxicated people.

“It breaks my heart, but now we have something we can give government and say here is the numbers, these are our brothers and sisters who don’t have a home,” Corbett said.

The first step for all levels of government is to offer targeted funding to get more housing options for people to get off the streets, Corbett said.

“It starts with transitional housing, supportive housing, emergency shelters, there is a need for all of those — get people off the streets and then we can look at jobs,” he said.

The point-in-time street census, which was co-ordinated by the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, was one of the strategies outlined by in the Community Task Force’s Long Term Strategy to End Homelessness report released in April.

The 74-page report, led by the United Way, outlined several achievement goals in the next five years in order to eradicate homelessness in the city. It included taking an annual census of Winnipeg’s homeless, as well as a series of five-year targets including the reduction of shelter use by the chronically homeless by 20 per cent, and a goal to create 7,500 affordable housing units for people who are homeless.

Mayor Brian Bowman, who made endorsing the United Way’s strategy a campaign pledge, said he remains committed to the task force’s strategy, which encourages housing first — an initiative that has emerged as a best practice to address homelessness. Cities in Alberta using the model, such as Lethbridge, have experienced a 64 per cent decrease in overall homelessness and a 93 per cent reduction in street homelessness since 2008. In Medicine Hat, chronic homelessness was eradicated using the model, which gets people in stable housing first before addressing issues of mental health or employment. The city has earmarked a $150,000 five-year annual grant in the budget for the initiative.

The federal government’s Homelessness Partnering Strategy has directed its local community boards and agencies in Canada’s 10 largest cities to direct 65 per cent of its funding to Housing First programs.

“It works to deal with the challenges with employment, income, violence and health (second) as opposed to the other way around,” Bowman said Thursday. “For an individual’s overall well-being, they first and foremost have to find a stable place to call home.”

One example Bowman pointed to was the opening of WestEnd Commons, a 26-unit affordable housing community developed by St. Matthews Non-Profit Housing Inc. in March. The city funded it with $45,000 in capital funding, plus an additional $90,371 through the Neighbourhood Multi-Family Mixed-Use Building Grant Program.

“I am not interested in simply managing homelessness. I want to end it,” Bowman said. “The census offers really keen insights and observations of homelessness in Winnipeg and provides us with credible data that helps us establish benchmarks moving forwards.”

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca