Give the homeless homes

Food and clothes are just bandaids

Marilyn Fleger

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
St. Albert

The homeless want the same thing the rest of us want — a safe and affordable place to live, close to parks, schools, shopping centres and transportation.

So why do we keep handing them toques and mittens and sandwiches and soup? Because we are still stuck in the charity model of doing things, says Marilyn Fleger, director of community services for the Bissell Centre.

“Way too much of our activity for the homeless at the Bissell Centre is the charity model — the food, the clothing, the short-term assistance,” Fleger lamented.

“Are we trying to put a bandage on homelessness? Do we want to help them concretely get out of poverty as apposed to just supplementing their poverty by giving them toothbrushes and those kinds of little things?”

Fleger was one of several presenters at a recent Western Conference on Social Justice. About 30 people — most of them representatives of social justice commissions from dioceses across Western Canada — attended the Oct. 24-26 conference at St. Albert’s Star of the North Retreat Centre.

Shut down food

The Bissell Centre has been pondering whether to stop serving meals to the homeless because it’s leading nowhere and is becoming a liability issue. Crowds get bigger and bigger each week because the same people, as well as new ones, keep coming back.

Fleger says it costs about $100,000, including medical bills, shelters and food, “to keep a person homeless for a year.” She would like to see those resources invested more creatively to provide the homeless with affordable housing, as well as the skills to live in a home.

“We would be helping perhaps fewer people at a time, but we would give them quality assistance to actually get them some place rather than keep spinning our wheels with the same people over and over again.”

Fleger said she gave up on the government long ago and urged conference participants to partner up with big business to help provide concrete solutions.

The purpose of the conference was to get workable ideas for dealing with homelessness in Western Canada. It also served as a training workshop for those with limited experience on the issue.

Regina and Saskatoon, for instance, are now dealing with the consequences of their own economic boom — increasing homelessness due to a lack of affordable housing and higher rental rates.

Poverty, hunger and homelessness are issues St. Theresa Parish in Edmonton’s Millwoods area faces head on when people walk into the parish after their finances have run dry or they have lost their home.

Lack of resources

But dealing with these issues at the parish level “is extremely difficult” because of the lack of trained people to deal with them and the lack of resources, noted presenter Stephen Dufresne. “At the parish level we don’t seem to have those resources available. We don’t even know where to make the calls.”

Stephen Dufresne

Recently when a parishioner became homeless, parish secretary Maria Lupul was forced to deal with her situation.

“I feel empathy but I don’t have the qualifications to deal with social issues that people bring to my face,” she said at the conference.

Both Lupul and Dufresne gave the homeless parishioner their lunch and then arranged to move her possessions into a garage. They called the woman’s social worker and are still waiting for a call back. Eventually they found a place for the woman in a crowded women’s shelter in downtown Edmonton.

Dufresne estimates St. Theresa Parish spends nearly $100,000 a year in charity work, including some $37,000 in food hampers for the needy. The food for the hampers is donated, so the cost is an estimate.

Government‘s job

“I think we are doing the work the government should be doing,” Dufresne said. “As a Christian organization we need to hand out food hampers.

“But isn’t it the government’s role to look after the members of society who are most vulnerable?

“I really think that the government of Alberta is getting a free ride. Imagine if the Bissell Centre and the Marian Centre weren’t there.

”Are they (the homeless) going to go down to the legislature and get a free meal? Maybe they should.”

Dufresne’s solution is to force the government to act on the homelessness issue.

“I really think all of these groups that are doing charitable work should get together and say to the government, ‘In three months we are going to stop what we are doing unless you start to fund us properly,’” he said. “Squeaky wheels get the grease.”

One concrete response to the homelessness issue has come from the Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA), which since its founding assembly in 2005 has helped create 438 units of affordable housing in Edmonton. In most of these units, tenants will pay rent equivalent to 30 per cent of their income.

Habitat for Humanity, in conjunction with the GEA, will play a major role in the new Strathearn Heights development, having agreed to take up to 150 units to sell to low-to-modest income working families.

Another 200 to 300 affordable units will receive rental subsidies from various levels of government.

In addition to the Strathearn project, Habitat for Humanity is currently completing an 18-unit site in the city and is planning to build 40 additional units next year, announced Angela Robichaud, volunteer manager for Habitat Edmonton.

“We are hoping to reach 100 units a year (in a not-to-distant future).”

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