By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

Guidelines set for new City housing and homelessness committee

Mar 18, 2019 | 6:40 PM

The City of Red Deer can now move ahead with recruiting community members to sit on its new Community Housing and Homelessness Integrated Plan Ad Hoc Committee.

City council approved the committees terms of reference at its meeting on Monday.

Once formed the committee will consist of two members each from city council and the Community Housing Advisory Board (CHAB), and one each from the Indigenous community, the business community and a homeless serving agency.

There will also be one community member at large, and one housing public entity representative. Council voted 7-0 on Monday to add a 10th member who will represent the faith community.

Tricia Hercina, Social Planning Manager with The City says part of the new federal Reaching Home program is that there will be new targets set.

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“Those things haven’t all been worked out yet, so how and what we’re going to measure still have to be taken into consideration for our community plan,” she says.

“The other interesting element will be the concept of integrating service and capital. So across the housing continuum, which starts with being unsheltered, through to emergency shelters, and then different levels of housing, we haven’t, in the past, had the same focus on integration. We’re hoping this new plan will present opportunities for broader discussions on that.”

Because of the delay in getting this committee up and running, city council agreed in December to extend current OSSI and HPS funding to all community agencies currently receiving it, including but not limited to Safe Harbour, the Red Deer Native Friendship Society, and Central Alberta Women’s Outreach Society.

The dollars, which were to run out this spring, were extended until the end of September. 

However, council further extended it on Monday to last until March 31, 2020, a day before Reaching Home comes into effect.

Councillor Buck Buchanan and Mayor Tara Veer were absent from Monday’s meeting; Frank Wong served as chair in his role as deputy mayor.