Women’s Outreach receiving extra funding following Harbour House closure

Safe Harbour Executive Director Kath Hoffman says while the Harbour House model is one that does and can continue to work elsewhere, they sadly ran into safety issues.

“We were having difficulty having people remain safe in the house in terms of intoxication and stairs. It’s an Alberta Infrastructure building so we were limited in what we could do to improve the safety of the house,” Hoffman laments. “That was always something we were holding our breath on. We had a couple of scares and decided we couldn’t do this anymore.”

She adds that while Safe Harbour certainly isn’t in the business of evicting people, they are in the business of keeping people safe. Therefore, they went through the process of re-housing everyone who was living at Harbour House, something which was recently completed. People remained there until they could be re-housed, she also noted.

In the meantime, the Women’s Outreach Society has more money to spend.

“It’s going to enhance the Rapid Rehousing Program that we’re currently offering,” says Executive Director Barb Barber. “What this funding allows us to do is take in more and move people off the intake list and get them services quicker than we were doing before.”

The intake for that program is done by Safe Harbour.

Central Alberta Women’s Outreach Society currently receives just over $300,000 in OSSI annually. The extra $100,000 is one-time funding. It’s current deal for OSSI also ends in June of next year before it will be reassessed.

The CHAB will report back to council in the near future with recommendations for the remaining $500,000.

by Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Women’s Outreach receiving extra funding following Harbour House closure

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