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City of Red Deer to craft new homelessness and housing plan

Feb 4, 2019 | 8:07 PM

A new made in Red Deer plan to tackle homelessness and housing is coming down the pipe.

On Monday night, city council approved the terms of reference for a plan which will ultimately replace the 2008-2018 Plan to End Homelessness.

With an expectation for the unnamed plan to come back to council for approval as early as this fall, the ad hoc committee tasked with crafting it will need to keep a number of guiding principles in mind.

The plan will guide the community’s efforts around providing integrated housing and supports, it will build on the success of the previous plan, and it will last no longer than five years, which is in line with modern-day best practice so that communities can revisit its successes and failures sooner.

“It’s important that we are addressing the social issues that Red Deer is faced with because we have an ethical imperative to do so. We have a social responsibility,” says Mayor Tara Veer. “There are visible aspects to the very significant social challenges that Red Deer – like many Alberta communities – is faced with, particularly with respect to addictions, and in Red Deer’s case, the lack of shelter support.”

Veer says The City feels like it has gained momentum in talks with the province to fix the shelter gap.

“The complexities around Red Deer’s homeless population have changed in the last decade with Red Deer having elevated its status as a regional hub city,” Veer continued.

“One of the most important gaps in the previous plan was the fact that the province had not identified shelter as a priority. Obviously, shelter isn’t housing and we always want to move people into housing, but many of the social challenges that we’re faced with are a direct consequence of the fact that shelter has been under-funded and under-prioritized in Red Deer. That needs to be an area of focus in the coming five years.”

Sarah Cockerill, The City’s Director of Community Services, says the new $62,000 plan will also move away from using the phrase ‘ending homelessness,’ a term coined by the Morris Flewwelling-led Mayor’s Task Force in 2005.

“We recognize that people are in and out of the different stages of homelessness, or are on the verge of homelessness, or are in supported housing; all the way along the spectrum,” she says. “We want to make sure everyone is housed appropriately and supported in maintaining their housing.”

The City currently receives approximately $700,000 annually from the federal government and around $3.9 million from the province to help tackle homelessness. A portion of the federal dollars is earmarked or Indigenous initiatives, which Cockerill notes is a demographic over-represented within Red Deer’s homeless population.

“We will have a greater focus on our Indigenous population in our next plan. We want to work to address that. We also want to continue with our coordinated access and coordinated entry,” she says. “But it’s really about being innovative, doing things differently, and the integration of all of those together in a coordinated way. It’s also certainly going to involve community consultation.”

The most recent Point in Time Homeless Count conducted in Red Deer in April 2018 showed there were at least 144 people who would be considered homeless. Of those, 55 per cent were considered chronically homeless, while 17 per cent were under the age of 25. Four out of every 10 were Indigenous, while Red Deer’s Indigenous community makes up just 5.3 per cent of the total population.

In contrast, the 2012 PIT Count identified 279 homeless people in Red Deer, 44 per cent of which were Indigenous.

Meanwhile, the federal government has introduced a new housing strategy called Reaching Home, the funding for which comes into effect April 1. Because The City won’t have its new plan ready until later this year, council recently extended current funding until September for organizations already receiving a cut.

Reaching Home is designed to work towards a 50 per cent reduction in chronic homelessness over the next decade.