Edmonton’s mayor introduced a motion at city hall Monday calling for a housing and homelessness emergency to be declared in the city, along with a plan to provide both immediate and systemic change to help those in need.
Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said if approved, his first action will be to invite Alberta Social Services Minister Jason Nixon, federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser and Cody Thomas, grand chief of the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations, to discuss possible solutions at an emergency meeting.
Sohi is also calling for setting up a task force with city and community leaders to create a future vision and to raise money to help support social services efforts.
The motion wasn’t approved Monday evening, as the meeting was adjourned until Tuesday.
The motion calls for a verbal report by Feb. 27 to provide a list of immediate actions that the city can take.
Over the past few weeks, city staff and members of the Edmonton Police Service have worked to dismantle eight homeless camps in the city that were deemed to be “high-risk,” due to concerns about gang activity, drug use, fire risk or other factors.
The province, the city and the EPS have all said shelters have capacity to take in people from the dismantled encampments. Shelter capacity for those displaced by the camps’ removals was one of the conditions that had to be met to allow for the recent dismantling of the camps.
Late last week, at least half of Edmonton’s city councillors questioned how the cleanup was done.
— with files from Global News
Comments