Housing the homeless costs the same as leaving them on streets

In the federal budget, the government surprised anti-poverty advocates by announcing a five-year renewal of funding for the Homelessness Partnering Strategy. At the same time, it also announced that the Housing First principle should be central. It pointed to evidence from a massive pilot project run by the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

In its Economic Action Plan 2013, the Federal Government of Canada proposed $119 million annually from March 2014 until March 2019—with $600 million in new funding—to renew its Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS). In dealing with homelessness in Canada, the focus is on the Housing First model. Housing First has grown in popularity in Canada and is used in many Canadian ten-year plans to end homelessness.

As Tim Richter, President and CEO CAEH explains, "the federal government has been giving money to the Homelessness Partnership Strategy for years. They’re looking for evidence-based, results-oriented priorities to end homelessness, and the Housing First Model is it."

"Jabberwalker" said
The whole idea runs contrary to that old Inner Calvinist that a lot of us still haul around.

"Unsound" said
The whole idea runs contrary to that old Inner Calvinist that a lot of us still haul around.

"PublicAnimalNo9" said
It's getting fucking pathetic andy. I know you just can't resist taking shots at the Conservatives but c'mon dude, at least get your shit straight.

From The Globe and Mail

From Wikipedia:



From Jan.2014 Rabble.ca:

We get it. You don't like Harper or the Conservatives. So much so that you'll be damned if you'll let things like cold, hard facts get in the way of a good anti-Harper rant.

"Gunnair" said
Speechless, Andy?

VANCOUVER -- Three hundred formerly homeless people with mental illnesses will not be kicked back onto the streets, even though a cutting-edge project that provided them with housing will end next month.

The federal and provincial governments have reached a last-minute deal to allow the participants of the At Home/Chez Soi academic study to remain in their apartments for one more year.

However, these chronically homeless people will no longer have access to the same support services that helped them adjust to living inside again during the three-year, national, $110-million study run by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and funded by the federal government.

It is no doubt a bittersweet ending for the project, which aimed to prove the most difficult-to-house people in society can stabilize if they are offered a home first, and then support services such as doctors, drug treatment and counselling.

Academic researchers at Simon Fraser University and outreach workers had hoped Vancouver’s $30-million arm of the project would receive permanent funding, and that it would be expanded to help other homeless people with mental illnesses.

Early data results in Vancouver suggest for the most street-entrenched participants, it was actually cheaper to give them housing and support compared to the cost of rotating through hospital emergency rooms, courtrooms and jail cells.

Federal funding for the study is scheduled to end March 31.

The Vancouver Sun, which published two exclusive series on this project, has learned Ottawa will provide transition funding to cover one additional year of rent for participants living in 200 apartments scattered across the city, and 100 rooms in the former Bosman hotel downtown.

However, the federal government will no longer pay for the support services that helped these people stabilize. They will now be helped through existing programs run by Vancouver Coastal Health and the provincial government.

The Bosman is scheduled for re-development so its 100 residents can likely be moved to government-run SRO (single room occupancy) buildings in the future, said Housing Minister Rich Coleman.

But Coleman would like the federal government to commit to long-term funding for the 200 people in the apartments, and also to their support services. It is not fair, he argued, for Ottawa to start this project and then expect the province to pick up the tab when it ends.

“You started this and you have to remain partners in this,” Coleman said, vowing to continue to lobby the federal government for more money. “Thanks for a bit but we’re not done with you yet.”

He also warned the extensive list of services participants received in the Bosman — everything from an in-house psychiatrist to cooking classes — cannot be replicated in the province’s many SRO buildings that house vulnerable residents.

“To go to the level of the Bosman, we say to the federal government: You want this Cadillac, you’ve got to pay,” Coleman said.

Vancouver Coastal Health is hoping to hire some of the clinicians who were embedded in the Bosman, so they can continue to work with the residents even after they are housed elsewhere, said Joanne Bezzubetz, VCH community services executive director.

"Unsound" said
The whole idea runs contrary to that old Inner Calvinist that a lot of us still haul around.