A plan to end homelessness is being brought to Saskatoon city council.
The proposal, created by the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP), is asking for $130,000 a year in funding from the city.
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It includes housing 150 people by 2019, adding 45 new case managers, and at least 35 new housing units per year.
“There’s a broad range of goals in this,” SHIP executive director Shaun Dyck said.
“It includes housing, it includes support, it includes prevention, but it also includes bringing the community together and really making sure that there’s a cohesive and collective action towards ending homelessness in Saskatoon.”
Homelessness is rising.
According to a head-count by SHIP, the amount of people experiencing homelessness has almost doubled in seven years.
“Our first point-in-time count in 2008, had 260 people found homeless that one evening. By 2015, there were 450 people. So that’s a huge increase,” Dyck said.
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The contract would also look at preventing homelessness from happening, according to one city councillor.
“It isn’t just about the bricks and mortar of housing, it’s about the supports that go along with it,” Ward 2 councillor Hilary Gough said.
“It’s about ways that we prevent homelessness in the first place. That’s what I think this shift is really doing.”
Council has yet to approve the commitment.