Councillors debate program for homeless employment
Pilot project would offer payment to clean up city
Kirsten Fenn
Northern News Services
Friday, March 24, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The majority of city councillors want to move ahead with piloting a Winnipeg-based homelessness employment program in Yellowknife, despite weighing other options such as on-the-land job programming.
Mayor Mark Heyck is seen at the Municipal Services Committee meeting on Monday, where council discussed the best option for a Homelessness Employment Program. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSL photo |
"We can learn from the Winnipeg model," Coun. Adrian Bell said via conference call during a municipal services committee meeting at city hall on Monday.
"This already exists. For us to now look at other models, we're basically saying we won't be able to do this, this year."
Bell said council already had conversations during budget talks in December about using the Winnipeg-based model for the pilot project. Any other ideas should be left for future budget debates, he said.
"I prefer to just put behind us any talks of looking at other models," said Bell.
A homelessness employment program based on the Winnipeg model would provide homeless individuals with daily employment to do things around the city like shovel snow, pick up garbage or clean the community.
"There are pros and cons to this model, as there are with any of them, but certainly this is one that we've taken a little bit of time to look at," said Sheila Bassi-Kellett, senior administrative officer.
"We'd like to get plans going on this in April so we're ready to go in spring and summer."
Administration presented five program options to council in a memo at Monday's meeting.
Besides the Winnipeg model, it suggested the city could instead supplement existing employment programs that help people gain basic skills and write resumes, or supplement wage subsidies offered by local organizations that address homelessness.
Other choices would be to offer an on-the-land employment program, or to open up the process to allow people to submit other innovative programming ideas.
Council set aside $50,000 for the pilot project in its 2017 budget, which was passed in December.
The project money is for the 2017 budget year, according to city spokesperson Nalini Naidoo.
Coun. Linda Bussey, however, wanted to explore on-the-land programming further.
"When we had those discussions (in December), I understood that the Winnipeg model was one model that we could look at, but it wasn't the definite model that we would go with," Bussey said.
She told council it should take a more "comprehensive" and "holistic" approach to the pilot.
"I think if we just offer people employment without any other kinds of services and programs, I think sustainability can be very weak," Bussey said.
Based on Yellowknife's culture, she was in favour of developing an on-the-land employment program but others thought that could be too complicated. Coun. Shauna Morgan said she didn't know of any off-the-shelf, land-based programs Yellowknife could easily adopt. She also worried how such a program would accommodate people from different communities who are now living in Yellowknife, as they may have different relationships to the land, depending on where they are from.
She wasn't alone.
"I think we're making it way more complicated than what it needs to be at this point. It's about people who want to come work for a few hours," Coun. Niels Konge said. "Let's keep it simple. Let's get this rolling. Let's talk about this at our next budget to see whether $50,000 is enough, or whether it's worth doing more or less."
Council is expected to provide administration with formal direction for moving ahead with the Winnipeg model next week.
