‘We need to be the connector’
Edmonton police chief weighs in on plan to end homelessness
Edmonton’s police Chief Dale McFee told the city’s housing and homeless-serving sector that police need to work to connect people with resources and cooperate across social agencies, during a talk on the city’s plan to prevent and end homelessness Thursday.
“A lot of our calls for service are mental health and addictions, obviously housing plays a large part of that role. We need to play a larger role and we need to be the connector to services that are actually going to get them the help,” McFee told the media following his keynote presentation.
As of August, 1,607 people in Edmonton were experiencing homelessness, and 201 had just begun to experience homelessness, according to data gathered by Homeward Trust Edmonton. However, 1,332 people were supported by housing programs, and 85 per cent of those people stayed in that housing.
“We have a homeless strategy, a housing strategy, a poverty strategy, a mental health strategy, an addiction strategy, a (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) strategy — would everyone agree that they are mostly the same people under every strategy?” said McFee during his keynote, who added that in many cases, the justice system is not the answer.
Bringing community, social agency partners and data together is essential in reducing homelessness, McFee said.
“No more us on top, because that’s not sustainable.”
Since January 2019, Edmonton has cut its chronic homeless numbers by 15 per cent, according to a fall community update from Homeward Trust. In the past year, street homelessness — or the number of people sleeping rough — has gone down by 30 per cent since Sept. 1, 2018.
The city’s trajectory right now could end chronic homelessness, including those sleeping in shelters or vehicles, by 2022, said Susan McGee, chief executive officer of the Homeward Trust Foundation, after she had provided an update to the community.
Chronic homelessness could be stopped by 2020; however, “that’s going full speed,” she said.
Edmonton’s revised plan to end homelessness calls for a further $230 million in capital funding over the next six years, and $30 million per year in new operational funding to ramp up the system.
That plan would yield an estimated cost savings of $228 million over 10 years in reduced use of health care, emergency services, police and justice resources, and other systems.
“We know that we are not as effective as we can be,” said McGee.
Data collection and building closer partnerships across social agencies have already contributed to reducing homelessness in the city, she said.
“It’s the progress we’ve made in being able to share that information so that everyone can work consistently.”