Street Links’ supporters demand slice of funding pie to shelter homeless

Anger and dismay filled the room as dozens of supporters and residents called on the City of Winnipeg to restore funding to St. Boniface Street Links after it lost a contract to help the homeless population find shelter.

Extra chairs had to be brought in to the Norwood Community Centre to accommodate the packed room, which included members of the outreach team and Coun. Cindy Gilroy, the only politician in the room.

“We will not be discouraged,” outreach co-ordinator Michelle Wesley told the crowd, earning a round of applause. “We’re not going anywhere. We will continue showing up. We will continue to do the work… one street at a time.”

The city, which took responsibility for allocating funding under the province’s Your Way Home strategy in April, awarded its sole $275,000 outreach contract to Main Street Project last month, leaving Street Links and other organizations in the lurch.

Street Links’ expired contract had involved provincial funding.

Executive director Marion Willis said she took a step back after the decision to see how the community would respond. On Thursday, the message was clear.

“If the community responded, that would indicate to me that we’ve been very successful,” Willis said. “Our success isn’t just measured by the number of encampments we can dismantle, the number of people we can house. It’s the extent to which we can engage the community to help them feel, that we all own the challenges and we’re all part of the solutions.”

In an internal email to Mayor Scott Gillingham and fellow councillors last week, Gilroy criticized the city’s move to exclude Street Links and other groups from the round of funding.

“I’ve seen first-hand the difference their work makes not only in addressing homelessness, but in helping individuals struggling with addiction navigate systems that are often impossible to access without strong advocacy and support,” Gilroy wrote.

Willis emphasized she has no objection to Main Street Project receiving the contract — the organization runs Winnipeg’s only 24-7 outreach van — but questioned why other groups were excluded from funding.

“(MSP and us) are not great friends,” she said, adding MSP’s practices do not mirror those of Street Links. “But there is a place for all of us out there. All of these outreach teams are doing the very best they can with what they have. It’s going to take all of us.”

Between 2022 and 2024, the city divided $550,000 in outreach funding between three groups: $356,250 to Main Street Project, $118,750 to St. Boniface Street Links, and $75,000 to Resource Assistance for Youth.

Willis told attendees that previous funding had helped expand Street Links’ outreach work into a $600,000 program — one she now intends to sustain through donors.

She noted that past private contributions, including a recent $2.5 million donation, will be reallocated to maintain outreach efforts. The donation provides $500,000 in funding each year for the next five years. Street Links already received $250,000 in April and will receive another $250,000 on Aug. 1.

“We don’t have to report to the city; we don’t have to report to the province,” she said. “You know who we are going to report to? You. Because it’s you who have funded the program all along.”

The cuts have affected the West Central Women’s Resource Centre, whose outreach team — the only one in Winnipeg targeted to women and gender-diverse people — will finish working on Sunday. The province did not renew its $256,000 contract, and no money was provided by the city.

“The real concern for us is that it will slow down the process of getting housed, that it will take away the emphasis on women and gender-diverse people who have unique needs when it comes to a housing search and their safety in encampments,” said Lorie English, executive director of the centre.

Tom Scott of the Old Saint Boniface Residents’ Association urged the city to reconsider.

“Everyone can do a job, but we want Marion to do the job here,” Scott said. “We want the province and the city to find that funding to help with that.”

Street Links still receives $250,000 annually from the city to help operate its 24/7 safe space.

Earlier Thursday, Housing Minister Bernadette Smith said the province will continue to work with Street Links. She had met with Willis one day earlier to discuss the matter.

“That’s why our government has provided over $800,000 both last year and this year to St. Boniface Street Links through health to house Manitobans who would otherwise be at risk of living in encampments after leaving hospital. We will continue to work with St. Boniface Street Links to ensure we build the units so Manitobans can move out of encampments and into safe homes.”

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Smith, who spoke earlier in the day at an unrelated news conference in Brandon, said MSP has found shelter for 90 per cent of people who have been housed under the new Your Way Home program.

“So I have every confidence in the work that they are doing,” Smith said, adding that MSP has been going to encampments and knows many of those who are unsheltered.

Since the provincial program began, 45 people have been sheltered, of which MSP found homes for 41 of them.

Smith pointed out the government is providing more than $800,000 to the women’s resource centre for transitional housing units, which include wraparound supports.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is 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.