Officials meet to discuss findings on homelessness

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This article was published 10/08/2024 (553 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Representatives from the provincial housing minister’s office, the City of Brandon and local organizations met at the A.R. McDiarmid Civic Complex on Friday to discuss a Manitoba delegation’s findings from a recent trip to Houston, Texas.

That delegation, which included Housing Minister Bernadette Smith and Mayor Jeff Fawcett, went to Houston to study how that city has addressed homelessness using a housing first model.

Friday’s meeting brought together members of Brandon City Council and officials from local non-profits, the Manitoba Métis Federation, Brandon East NDP MLA Glen Simard’s office, among others.

According to Brandon’s housing and wellness co-ordinator, Shannon Saltarelli, the discussion focused on the takeaways from the Houston trip and what ideas could be implemented locally.

“I thought it was really good because it’s important to understand demographically how different we are and that homelessness in many different places across our nation, across North America, looks very different,” Saltarelli said.

“Therefore, there is not one model that’s going to work everywhere, but we can learn from other places what has worked well, what has not worked well and what we would do different.”

She said she was encouraged that provincial representatives were interested in visiting a city where there has been some success in tackling homelessness.

However, Saltarelli noted that some of Houston’s circumstances differ from Brandon’s. For instance, Houston has a high vacancy rate while Brandon has a low rate.

“Most of the people that are entering into homelessness is simply because of a loss of income, whereas in our community, we have people entering homelessness for things like acute and persistent mental health crises, poverty, colonialization and intergenerational family trauma,” she said.

Those factors are why it’s important for Brandon not just to build homes, but provide wraparound supports to help with employment, addiction, mental health and other challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness.

Beyond talking about the lessons learned in Houston, Saltarelli said the meeting was a good chance for participants to talk about what their struggles have been in tackling local homelessness and sharing that information directly with provincial representatives to inform their decision-making.

Some of the participants in Friday’s meeting are part of the steering committee currently working on a community safety and well-being plan for Brandon. Saltarelli said it will be important for these plans to align with the efforts being done not just at the provincial level but in other municipalities as well.

Currently, the steering committee is running an online survey to help inform the development of the well-being plan.

So far, Saltarelli said there have been almost 800 participants.

The survey can be found online at surveymonkey.com/r/BMVJYYZ.

If residents want a paper copy to fill out, they can email cwsbplan@brandon.ca.

The city is also working on community engagement sessions that will share their findings with the Canadian Centre for Safer Communities to help further develop the plan.

One of the non-profit representatives at the meeting was Dwayne Dyck of Westman Youth for Christ. That organization has partnered with the John Howard Society of Brandon to help build a transitional housing facility destined for the 300 block of 16th Street North.

“They seem to be open to hearing our voices, to hearing our stories,” Dyck said of the provincial officials at the meeting.

“There’s some really positive ideas that they brought as far as not just listening to people, but understanding that Brandon has its own unique challenges, its own sort of unique benefits and that organizations work together pretty strongly already in our community.”

Some of those local challenges, he said, include staff retention, burn out and funding.

Like Saltarelli, Dyck referenced some of Houston’s different circumstances compared to Brandon, like the high vacancy rate. However, they had the will and the energy to effect change.

“If we put some focus and energy into it, which is what they did in Houston, it seems to work well,” he said.

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