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Billion-dollar solution
Construction of affordable housing would pay for itself by 2020, mayor's committee says
BY RICHARD WARNICA AND ALEXANDRA ZABJEK, THE EDMONTON JOURNALJANUARY 29, 2009 9:01 AM
The committee to End Homelessness is budgeting $400 million in capital costs and $570 million for operations over the next decade.
Photograph by: Rick MacWilliam, Edmonton Journal
Mayor Stephen Mandel's hand-picked Committee to End Homelessness will call today for almost $1 billion in new funding to build and secure thousands of affordable and supportive housing units over the next decade, says a copy of the report obtained by The Journal.
The report -- A Place to Call Home -- says the city can halve the need for emergency shelters by 2014 and offer a permanent home to all those living on the street by 2011 with money from the provincial and federal governments.
"It's time to make a fundamental change in the way we respond to these citizens in need," wrote the committee, made up of members of the city's business, political, and social elite, as well as front-line workers in city shelters, transition houses and advocacy groups.
"That change can bring an end to homelessness in 10 years, ensuring all citizens have access to a safe, secure and permanent home."
The report sets almost a dozen targets, including:
- Decreasing the number of sheltered homeless to 2006 levels by 2012.
- Securing 800 supported housing units in partnership with private landlords by 2012.
- Developing 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing by 2014.
- Obtaining 1,650 modestly sized units by 2019, with the first ones coming on line in 2011.
- Reducing the need for emergency shelter capacity by 50 per cent by 2014.
The price tag, which includes more than $400 million in capital costs and over $570 million for operations, may make some pause. But the authors say if fully implemented, the plan will pay for itself by 2020.
Over time, the costs of shelters, increased ambulance trips, emergency room visits, police, court and jail services for homeless people will exceed the costs of providing them a home, the report says.
Steve Pomeroy, an Ottawa researcher specializing in homelessness Ottawa, agreed.
It is almost always cheaper to house the homeless than it is to treat them on the street, said Pomeroy, who has studied the issue in major Canadian cities.
The problem is, it won't be easy to see that in a budget, he said.
"The savings that are being achieved are in the police services and the hospitals," Pomeroy said. "But the expenditures are being incurred in the housing department. Is the hospital or the police department prepared to give up some of their budgets to help build the housing? In most cases, not."
The report is being released two days after the federal government promised $12 billion for new and existing infrastructure in the next two fiscal years to help stimulate the faltering economy.
Lobby for federal funds
Chaldeans Mensah, a Grant Mac-Ewan College political scientist, said the economic slowdown may help the committee's billion-dollar proposal. The city should lobby for some of those funds for affordable housing, he said.
"It's a way of providing stimulus to the people who are going to be doing the construction," he said. "But it's also stimulus that is going to address the welfare of people who are not going to be benefiting from the tax cuts and other policies in the budget."
The 10-year plan focuses heavily on Housing First, a U.S. model that aims to put the homeless into permanent homes as quickly as possible.
Hundreds of U.S. cities and a handful in Canada have created 10-year plans based on the system.
A study in Portland, Ore., cited in the report, found a Housing First project there was able to reduce the annual cost of treating one group of chronically homeless by $16,000 per person, per year.
Another, in Rhode Island, found it was cheaper by almost $9,000 per capita to deal with the chronically homeless with a Housing First model than it was to leave them on the street.
In January 2008, Mandel appointed the Committee to End Homelessness.
He had vowed a year earlier to develop a lasting solution to the city's housing problems after hundreds of homeless people set up a tent city on a vacant inner-city lot.
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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Homes/Billion+dollar+homelessness+solution/1230026/story.html
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