Council targets homelessness
Plans meetings with stakeholders, including shelter staff
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, January 16, 2017
IQALUIT
In the wake of the tragic death of Jake Angurasuk, Coun. Joanasie Akumalik asked fellow council members Jan. 10 to renew efforts to help homeless people.
Coun. Joanasie Akumalik, left, urges fellow Iqaluit city councillors to take action to improve the plight of the homeless in the capital. Coun. Simon Nattaq looks on. - Michele LeTourneau/NNSL photo |
"This council has a role to play in protecting the lives of homeless people in this community," said Akumalik.
As a result, Iqaluit city council will tour the Uquutaq Society men's shelter, hold a special council meeting, and then gather homelessness stakeholders together.
Search-and-rescue volunteers found Angurasuk's body Dec. 18, 10 km outside Iqaluit, during a community effort to find the missing man.
He was found 14 days after last being seen at Uquutaq.
"My vision for homelessness in Iqaluit is to create programs for the homeless people so that, especially with the men's shelter, they can stay in that building - especially in the cold -50s winters we have," Akumalik said.
Uquutaq, like many shelters which offer a place to sleep overnight, opens at 5 p.m. and the men must leave at 8:30 a.m.
The shelter does remain open during especially nasty weather.
Deputy mayor Romeyn Stevenson pointed out the lack of daytime hours is not the only concern regarding the men's shelter.
"In addition to the programming issue, which leaves people scattered about town, moving from one warm spot to another, there is the issue of the actual physical state of the men's shelter and its need for significant improvement to make their stay there better when they're actually there," he said.
Stevenson said, as per e-mails exchanged among council members, homelessness needs to be broken down into big-picture issues and smaller issues, including the importance of having ongoing communication with the shelter's executive director, Douglas Cox.
"He's offered before and I think he would gladly speak to us," said Stevenson.
Coun. Kuthula Matshazi also weighed in, prefacing his statement with his own experience with homelessness.
"When I first came to Canada, I stayed in a shelter. We had a similar situation where every morning we woke up and we had to get out, wander out and about. But we were fortunate enough because it was summer," he said.
Matshazi said the experience showed him how difficult it is not having a place to stay.
He then echoed previous statements about the complexity of homelessness.
"If we are talking about homeless as a whole, we know we have a serious, serious issue we have to deal with.
"But if we are talking about programming it changes the dynamic because then we can say, in terms of the coordination and the resources we can acquire to provide programming for the men's shelter, it's feasible," he said.
"But homelessness in general, it's much more than the men's shelter."
Coun. Simon Nattaq, speaking in Inuktitut, also noted that people from other communities end up homeless in Iqaluit.
"People who are outcast from their communities. We have to think about those, too," he said, adding the city should seek additional funding to expand the shelter.
Coun. Terry Dobbin then warned about the use of funding.
"Funding is great, but if you're going to utilize funding going around having discussions and nothing materializing from these discussions ... I would rather the funding going directly to the Uquutaq shelter rather than paying someone to go around to discuss poverty and not really get to the root of the problem," he said.
He also endorsed collaboration with Qikiqtani Inuit Association, among others.
Mayor Madeleine Redfern did note at the beginning of the discussion that there are a couple of federal initiatives, namely a proposed housing strategy and a proposed homelessness strategy.
Council ultimately decided it would convene at a special meeting to discuss what it learns from the shelter by the end of January, and convene a meeting of stakeholders within a month's time.
