Local advocate buoyed by new national strategy

For Melissa Coomber-Bendtsen, the most exciting part of the national housing strategy announced Wednesday is the consideration of women and families.

“How women and children recover from and deal with homelessness is different, and that is reflective in this strategy,” said Coomber-Bendtsen, CEO of the Regina YWCA.

Eighty per cent of women who stay at the YWCA’s local shelter, My Aunt’s Place, are fleeing violence. Also, most of them have children.

Because safety is a concern, rehousing women and children is more complex than rehousing a single homeless man, she said.

“It becomes a much more complex need when we look at where we’re going to house them. What are some of the safety concerns and then some of the support systems needed when you add complex trauma?” said CoomberBendtsen.

The 10-year, $40-billion housing strategy commits at least 25 per cent of funds to projects for women, girls and their families.

“The advocacy work we’ve been doing about the intersectionality of violence and homelessness, this strategy speaks to that intersectionality and how closely connected gender-based violence is to homelessness and housing needs,” she said.

The YWCA has been part of Regina’s Housing First pilot project, working to house and support chronically homeless people in conjunction with Phoenix Residential Society, Carmichael Outreach, Street Culture Project and the YMCA.

This national strategy “allows us to have a Housing First strategy moving forward,” said CoomberBendtsen, “particularly in Regina as we start to plan what that … plan to end homelessness is going to look like.”

The Homelessness Partnering Strategy is currently seeking a consultant who can devise a plan to end homelessness in Regina.

The national strategy “may change our times where we could eradicate homelessness, and that’s the plan we want to have,” said Mayor Michael Fougere.

“But it doesn’t change our working with partnerships to ensure that we can get to functional zero homelessness sometime in the next year or two.”

The federal government stated that federal, provincial and territorial governments would jointly fund the strategy. It said $2.2 billion would be committed specifically to reducing homelessness.

Fougere’s biggest complaint with the strategy is its vagueness — a lot of questions remain.

“Is this transfer money contingent upon provincial money coming in as well? Don’t know that yet. What’s that mean for Saskatchewan? Not sure about that yet either,” said Fougere.

He hopes those questions will be answered “as soon as possible.”

“We’d like details because we’re trying to move forward very aggressively on homelessness and we want to make sure that we have support from the federal government in a substantive way over a number of years into the future,” he said.

He said every city in the country has concerns with addressing social housing and affordable housing, so “the fact that they’re talking about it is good news.”

The national housing strategy aims to reduce chronic homelessness by 50 per cent, create 60,000 new homes, repair 240,000 existing homes, protect 385,000 households from losing an affordable place to live, and house 530,000 families or people in need.

About 1.7 million Canadians are in need of housing.

How women and children recover from and deal with homelessness is different, and that is reflective in this strategy.