City reveals next steps in emergency housing plan for homeless families

The City of Calgary has announced it is moving forward with an emergency temporary housing plan for over 200 homeless families that council first tasked administration with creating in September. 

The city held a media conference on Thursday to provide more details on the initiative, which included the locations of the housing sites — with plans for one in the northeast and one in the southwest — and an announcement to accept expressions of interest from non-profit organizations to develop and operate the sites.

Both will be on city-owned land, one near the Whitehorn CTrain station, and the other near the Fish Creek-Lacombe station. The expression of interest period will close on Jan. 15, 2024. The process is expected to take 18 months to complete.

"Once housing provider partners are selected through this process, the city will negotiate a lease agreement and support those partners to deliver housing on the sites," reads a news release from the city sent Thursday.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek said this project is special, considering that it's a land lease, not a purchase.

"We are sending the signal that right now we absolutely need this land for this purpose. But in the future, when we have better housing options for people, it can be used for other purposes," Gondek told reporters.

With calls to move quickly on housing, the news release says using city-owned land is an effort to speed up the process. However, some say that for those who need housing immediately, it can't come soon enough.

"People will die in that time frame," said Chaz Smith of BeTheChange, a local non-profit.

"It's traumatic experiencing homelessness. We're going to continue to see deaths from that."

Smith added that "the city is doing the best they can with what they have," and ultimately it will be up to non-profits to "fulfil their end of the contract."

Following Thursday's news conference, Heather Morley, executive director of Inn from the Cold, called the 18-month time frame for the project "very ambitious," but she believes it is achievable.

When asked about pushback from communities surrounding the sites, Morley told reporters that people in need of housing "are our neighbours, these are our friends, these are our family."

"Everyone deserves a home. Housing is a human right. And if you don't want to see homelessness, if you don't want to think about a child sleeping in a shelter, then you have to say 'yes' to affordable housing," she said.

Katie Black, general manager of community services with the city, said that since September the real estate and development team, alongside the housing solutions team, have been going through an inventory of city lands to identify appropriate parcels. 

Prior to Thursday's news conference, Coun. Sonya Sharp said she doesn't think the city is moving fast enough to get the temporary housing sites up and running, given the ongoing housing crisis and colder winter months coming.

"I'm not impressed, I'll be completely honest," said Sharp. 

"I [was] under the impression that we already would have had these two sites and they would have been allocated to providers by the end of this year." 

Instead, Sharp said she believes the most optimistic outlook is that the temporary housing could be up and running by some time in early 2024. 

Nowhere to go

Morley said she was thrilled to hear that the project was moving forward.

"This is long overdue and much needed," said Morley. 

"We have been seeing more and more families being pushed to the brink of homelessness …  we have seen a dramatic increase in calls to our helpline and families with absolutely no place to go."

Morley said many affordable housing projects offer only one-bedroom or two-bedroom living accommodations, which is why a housing project tailored specifically for families is important. 

The future sites should also be close to amenities such as transit lines and schools for them to be most beneficial to families, Morley added. 

Black said the city is working hard to continue to move the project along. 

"Time is of the essence," she said. 

In the meantime, families who are awaiting temporary housing solutions will be turning to emergency shelters for help, said Morley. Only two-family oriented shelters exist in Calgary. Inn from the Cold has been running at maximum capacity in its shelters for over a year, said Morley. 

"We aim for a 30-day length of stay [at shelters]," she said. 

"We're actually closer to 60 or 70 days now for an average length of stay because there's nowhere for families to go. We haven't seen anything like this."