FUNDING BOOST FOR FRESH START
Former PGA golfer Chase Cronk counts himself as one of the successful graduates of the Fresh Start Recovery Centre’s addiction treatment program. The 50-bed non-profit ‘community’ in northeast Calgary will receive $7M in the NDP’s 2017 budget.
Like so many addicts before him, the fall for Calgary’s Chase Cronk was a long one.
An avid golfer since he was a youngster, the 33-year-old had earned his tour card on the Canadian PGA Tour in 2010, competing with some of the best in the country.
But battling the demons of addiction ultimately cost him his spot on the tour, sending him spiralling through years of treatment for his alcoholism.
“I lost my tour card as a result of my addiction. To be honest, I lost everything as a result of my addiction,” Cronk said, at a provincial funding announcement Monday for new housing units at Calgary’s Fresh Start Recovery Centre.
“When I came to Fresh Start I was broken.”
The 40,000 sq.-ft., 50-bed community in northeast Calgary will receive $7 million from the province’s 2017 budget, which will allow the non-profit to build new post-treatment housing including 46 beds for clients like Cronk, who’s just finishing his long road to recovery.
Premier Rachel Notley said despite grim economic times, it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure people don’t fall through the cracks.
“Some say that in an economic downturn, the thing to do is cut funding to essential programs and supports,” said Notley, who has been under fire from Alberta opposition parties after releasing a budget earlier this month saddled with a $10-billion deficit this year, and a provincial debt forecast to hit $71 billion by 2020.
“In this economic downturn we have a choice. We can lead the recovery or we can follow the recession.
“This is not the time to turn our backs on those Albertans, this is the time, instead, to help one another.”
The funding is part of $1.2 billion set aside over the next five years to provide housing for seniors and low-income Albertans.
The province plans on announcing its affordable housing strategy in the spring.
Notley added the province has also boosted its funding for addictions and mental health by $45 million in response to the opioid epidemic that has taken a deadly toll on Alberta.
“In the budget that we just introduced, we more than tripled the amount of funding to addiction therapy, to the opioid crisis in particular,” she said.
“We know that it’s a problem we have to face head on as a community.”
With the funding injection, Fresh Start will nearly double its housing capacity, a critical need with 125 men on the program’s wait list.
The average wait time for a client is around 90 days.
For Cronk, who has been at the facility for 15 months, he is celebrating a second chance at life.
“I feel good about the direction my recovery is going in today,” he said.
“With this new housing I’m able to move into the second phase of my recovery with the confidence I can do this.”