Conservative supporters finally helping the homeless

The rush of job seekers to Alberta has slowed somewhat. At least that’s what the most recent count of Calgary’s homeless population seems to indicate. Not that there are fewer people sleeping under bridges or in transit stations or on mats in shelters. There’s 18 per cent more than when the last count was conducted two years ago. However the rate of increase has slowed. Between 2004 and 2006 it shot up by 30 per cent. In the last 10 years it has increased sixfold. So the most recent count provided a glimmer of good news.

Still according to the city’s biennial homeless count there were 4060 souls in Calgary the night of May 14 who did not have a permanent residence to which they could return whenever they so chose (the city’s definition of a homeless person). This included people camped out on sidewalks and vacant lots or lodged in shelters jail cells hospitals and detox facilities. One hundred and ninety families with one or more children were found to be without a home. For comparison’s sake metro Vancouver counted 2600 homeless persons earlier this year; Toronto 5052 in 2006.

Not all the counts are conducted in the same way so it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Nevertheless one thing is clear: many of the homeless in Calgary and the rest of Alberta have paying jobs but they simply don’t earn enough to afford a place to live.

Calgary’s Mustard Seed estimates that up to 60 per cent of its residents are working. In March 2007 the Calgary Drop-In Centre Canada’s largest shelter reported that just over 40 per cent of its residents worked more than 32 hours a week. The Calgary Food Bank reports that the majority of its clients are working poor.

And here’s another statistic we can be proud of: according to the 2006 Hunger Count (a national survey of food banks) Alberta is No. 1 among provinces for the percentage of employed people who use food banks.

Last year Vancouver writer Tavis Dodds set out to stay in every homeless shelter in Alberta during the winter. In Fort McMurray he slept next to a man from the former Soviet Union who came in search of $1000-a-week work in the tar sands. At the shelter in Edmonton he was awoken at 4 a.m. when a guy heading out to work stepped on his foot with his work boots. In Calgary he met a carny a drywaller and a dishwasher in an emergency shelter set up in of all places the grounds of The Calgary Stampede one night when the temperature dropped below -25 C.

Dodds also reported many of the men at the temporary shelter were upset because the bus used to transport them back downtown didn’t arrive early enough to get them to work on time.

And let’s not forget that the young man who blew the whistle on a drunk Premier Ralph Klein after he showed up at an Edmonton homeless shelter one night and threw money at the residents while yelling at them to get jobs had recently arrived from Halifax was working at a gas station and sleeping at the shelter at night.

Of course there are also the homeless who are addicted mentally ill or disabled. They won’t be holding down jobs anytime soon but they still need to be housed. In a province with such a frenzied pace of construction it’s shameful that ordinary housing is so hard to come by.

The last homeless count in Calgary left civic leaders and the business elite so embarrassed they banded together and came up with a plan and funding to end homelessness. The Calgary Committee to End Homelessness has managed to get both the provincial and federal governments on board as well as the private sector and a wide range of non-profit and faith groups. It’s pledged to eliminate family homelessness within two years. By 2018 it plans to have enough new affordable housing units that no one need go without a home. It’s certainly an important undertaking and here’s hoping all the mission statements strategies and detailed plans (you can read the entire plan at www.endinghomelessness.ca ) actually produce housing for people who wouldn’t otherwise have it.

I can’t help but notice however that some of the key people who are spearheading this effort are also some of the staunchest supporters of the Alberta PC party which isn’t really a political party but a powerful elite that has controlled this province for way too long. Weren’t these the same people that cheered on Ralph Klein as he obliterated funding for subsidized housing cut social assistance rates and kept the minimum wage at the lowest level in Canada? Didn’t they gleefully agree the provincial debt must be eliminated no matter the cost to real people? And didn’t they also cheer on Premier Ed Stelmach when he refused to introduce even temporary rent controls?

They also supported the frenzied pace of oilsands development that encouraged workers to come here from all over Canada. It didn’t seem to occur to them that these workers would need a decent place to live. Or they simply didn’t care. Now they do. Unfortunately thousands of people throughout Alberta have had to endure homelessness before they realized the error of their ways.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based journalist who has covered politics since the Lougheed days.

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