The federal government through the ‘Homelessness Partnering Strategy’ gave the City of Lethbridge over $248,000 to prevent homelessness.
“There was numerous organizations that qualified, but we had to go through a vetting process and all that, and these were the three organizations we felt were the most appropriate for the funds,” city councillor Ryan Parker said.
READ MORE: ‘Housing first’ strategy seeing success across Alberta
Acting on the recommendation of the City’s Social Housing in Action (SHIA) Committee, council decided to split it between the YWCA, the HomeBASE Mobile outreach team, and a demonstration project to provide programming geared towards “cultural connectedness.”
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“We are getting close to actually ending homelessness in our city, so we’ve come a long way we still have a little bit to go,” Parker said.
Jennifer Lepko, Interim CEO of the YWCA, said they will be putting the money towards staffing. She said a big part in prevention is teaching people life skills.
“Going over basic cooking skills, basic clean skills, talking about guest management. Landlord and tenant relations, how (to) work with a landlord and create those relationships,” Lepko said.
READ MORE: Hidden homelessness: Alberta group calls for more support for rural areas
The SHIA committee involves many community organizations to prevent and ultimately end homelessness.
In seven years housing first programs in Lethbridge have housed over:
- 734 participants
- 239 participants achieved housing first graduation status
- In 2015-2016, 83 per cent housing first participants remained permanently housed
“Keeping somebody housed or or having someone who was living in a car who is now maintaining market housing, those are huge successes,” Lepko said.