City endorses plan to end homelessness
Advocate and city politicians say territorial and federal support now crucial
Emelie Peacock
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
City politicians and advocates are looking to the territorial and federal government for support to implement a recently passed 10-year plan to end homelessness in the city.
City councillors voted unanimously to adopt Everyone is Home: Yellowknife's 10 Year Plan to end Homelessness at a council meeting on Monday. The mayor says he hopes to see support for the plan from the territorial and federal government. - Emelie Peacock/NNSL photo - |
At Monday's city council meeting, councillors voted unanimously to adopt Everyone is Home: Yellowknife's 10 Year Plan to end Homelessness.
The plan will guide the city's work in ending homelessness through to 2026 using a Housing First model, with the goal of prevention and ensuring homelessness does not last long or happen often.
Implementation over 10 years is estimated to cost $113 million and bring cost savings of $23 million over the period and $5 million per year of estimated savings thereafter. The numbers were presented at a June 12 council meeting by city consultant Alina Turner.
"We're looking at $10 million a year," said coun. Linda Bussey. "We need support from the GNWT, we need to ensure housing is available so we need to work with the housing (corporation). There's many partners out there."
In the first year of implementation, the plan aims to house 15 homeless individuals and families, create 20 rent support spaces and begin healing activities with elders.
Lyda Fuller, executive director of YWCA Yellowknife, said she is glad there is a plan in place to direct work on ending homelessness.
"A lot will depend on all the sort of bigger players in this stepping up to the plate," she said.
"And that's both the federal government through their upcoming housing strategy ... but also the territorial government stepping up."
A goal of the new plan is to provide leadership on homelessness through a Homelessness Commission comprised of the premier, indigenous chiefs and the city's mayor. Within this leadership model, the report states the voices of indigenous people and people with lived experience with homelessness must be represented.
Mayor Mark Heyck said the plan has already been shared with members of the GNWT and an important first step is to start the discussions to get the commission formed.
A cornerstone of the plan is Housing First, a model to end homelessness focused on immediate provision of housing and support without any conditions such as sobriety or employment. The model has been tested in five Canadian cities.
Lydia Bardak, an advocate for homeless people in Yellowknife, said the ability of people to lift themselves out of homelessness starts with housing.
"When somebody is homeless, they're operating in survival mode, their number-one priority is to find food and shelter," she said.
"With housing, this means that people will then be able to start looking at counselling, programs, treatment programs, employment programs. Everything comes from a base of housing."
Bardak said the most expensive forms of housing after jails are emergency shelters and the least expensive is housing people in their homes.
Providing permanent housing is a humane way to treat people, Bardak said, as opposed to providing a mat on an emergency shelter floor.
Using money from the Federal Homelessness Partnering Strategy, the city is currently funding a Housing First program operated by the
Yellowknife Women's Society and recently began another Housing First initiative for families together with the YWCA.
Through the plan, 165 permanent housing units would be provided, tailored to indigenous people and other groups facing homelessness, such as women and children or immigrants. A case management system for the Housing First program will also be created, with the ability to serve 15 people at one time on an emergency basis and 20 people on a long-term basis.
The plan also calls for a minimum of 180 affordable housing spaces to be added to Yellowknife's rental market and 200 rent support spaces.
Coun. Linda Bussey, who is also the chair of the city's community advisory board on homelessness, said the biggest challenge going forward will be the money involved in implementing the plan.
The plan estimates 1,500 people use an emergency shelter or transitional housing in Yellowknife per year.
While most people experience homelessness for short time frames and infrequently, the plan estimates there are 225 people experience chronic homelessness, meaning long-term and ongoing homelessness.
