If the Calgary Committee to End Homelessness has its way family homelessness in the city will be eradicated within two years half the city’s shelter beds will be retired within five years and homelessness will be a thing of the past by 2018.
These are the goals of the committee’s much-awaited 10-year plan to end homelessness in Calgary. The plan released January 29 is based on other successful plans in U.S. cities like Portland and Denver. “You’re taking a systemic view of the problem and trying to get the system together toward an outcome of housing” says Tim Richter the plan’s project manager. “We’re shifting focus but it’s the same people the same agencies doing a lot of similar work [as before].”
The plan’s main focus is “housing first” — providing safe stable and affordable housing as well as the supports necessary to sustain housing. “That’s really important” says Shirley Purves executive director of local social services agency Aspen Family. “If you don’t have a house over your head it’s really impossible to work on parenting issues on career development on family issues on any kind of challenges that you’re facing…. I mean we find it hard to work on our own problem areas when we have a house and an income.” The plan calls for more than 11000 affordable housing units to be built by both the public and private sectors over the next decade.
Homelessness in Calgary has increased by 650 per cent over the last 10 years and the most recent homeless count done in May 2006 found more than 3400 homeless people in the city. (However many regard that statistic as inaccurately low.) Roughly half of Calgary’s homeless population is employed.
According to the report it costs more to maintain homelessness than to end it. One study shows homelessness in Calgary costs more than $322 million each year — an annual cost of $134000 for each person who’s “chronically homeless” or has been homeless for more than a year. “We’re spending that and the homeless problem is getting worse and worse” says Richter. “What we want to do is spend less and get a different outcome. But to do that you have to have an initial injection of money.” The plan calls for $1.8 billion from all three levels of government over the 10 years as well as $1.2 in private investment for land and housing.
The committee estimates that if nothing is done to reverse the current trend of homelessness there could be as many as 15000 Calgarians with no place to live by 2018 — a situation that could cost up to $9 billion each year.
