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Medicine Hat makes homelessness a thing of the past

P.E.I. taking different approach to homelessness

Five years ago, the Alberta city of Medicine Hat committed to an ambitious plan to end homelessness by this year.

One of the critics of the plan was former councillor, now mayor, Ted Clugston.

But with his city of 61,000 poised to be the first in North America to do just that, Clugston counts himself among the soundly converted.

“I wasn’t on board with this when they first announced it,” Clugston tells Yahoo News Canada. “I used to say silly things like, ‘why do they have granite countertops when I don’t?’”

He voted against several projects. Then advocates showed him the numbers.

The Medicine Hat Community Housing Society proved to him that a single homeless individual can cost about $134,000 a year in emergency-room visits, hospital stays and interactions with police and other first responders.

It costs about $34,000 a year to house that person.

“If you believe there’s only one taxpayer, it just makes fiscal sense,” says Clugston, a self-described conservative.

Spurred by the Alberta government’s commitment to end homelessness in a decade, the city of Medicine Hat came up with an even more ambitious plan. They would do it in half that time.

Social housing advocates merged into a single contact point for help – the community housing society. They worked with the city to build social housing and with private landlords to provide rental subsidies.

“You can have a job and still not have a home,” Clugston says.

Over the past five years they’ve housed approximately 875 people – 250 of them children.

They take a “housing first” approach, which means there are no preconditions to housing, like getting off drugs, getting a job or addressing mental health issues.

“You really can’t get off your drug addiction if you’re sleeping under a park bench,” Clugston says.

Per capita, Medicine Hat’s homelessness problem was on par with Calgary’s. The city still has emergency shelters but the goal is that within 10 days of finding out someone has no place to live, they’re found one.

“We’re pretty much able to do that right now,” Clugston says.

The mayor is fielding calls from all over the country about what the city has accomplished.

“There’s a ton of interest,” he says. “What I’ve come to appreciate is that a lot of people are just sick and tired of this problem and they don’t want to hear any more politicians speak; they just want to see some action.”

Medicine Hat has become a beacon of hope that it can be done.

About a quarter of the people who have been helped were children and one-third had experienced chronic homelessness. Sixty-eight per cent had experienced episodes of homelessness.

Thirty-eight per cent of the men and women who were housed had experienced family violence; almost a quarter had been involved in the foster care system at some point.

Robin Miller, chief administrative officer for the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, was not immediately available to comment.

On the society website, she says housing is a fundamental human right.

“Our belief is that people need a roof over their head. We know that with that, they can get back on their feet and live life to their full potential,” she says.

The housing society receives $2.6 million in grants annually - $2.3 million from the province and $319,000 from the federal government.

There are still emergency shelters in Medicine Hat but the number of people going through the doors has declined drastically.

“It’s not just that you solve it and it goes away. It will be chronic,” Clugston says. “It’s something we’ll have to deal with forever and hopefully we can maintain the operating funding.”