Stelmach unveils new homelessness office

Premier Ed Stelmach unveiled an initiative Monday to build 11,000 new affordable homes in Alberta over the next five years.

As CBC News first reported, the province is launching a 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness, spearheaded by the new Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness.

"This is an ambitious goal, but one that I believe we must pursue to help those most in need," Stelmach said in a news release that was originally scheduled to be publicized Monday night.

He also committed the government to adding at least 11,000 affordable homes in the next five years.

The premier said the new office led by Yvonne Fritz, Associate Minister of Affordable Housing and Urban Development, will be responsible for working with municipalities to develop a provincial strategy to find homes for thousands of people.

The secretariat is expected to be in place by April 2008, after several months to develop "a governance and accountability structure, terms of reference including membership, and budget."

Hope Hunter, executive director of Edmonton's Boyle Street Co-op, where 500 people dropped in for a recent free dinner, hopes the move will mean more action and less paperwork.

"It's hard to know always what government terminology really means," she said. "Hopefully it means that we have a mechanism by which we overcome silos and bureaucracy and we can move quickly to resolve … a problem that shouldn't exist in a province as wealthy as Alberta."

About 2,600 people in Edmonton and 3,400 in Calgary don't have a place to live, according to the last count of the homeless population in 2006.

Bothmajor cities have seen an increase of at least 20 per cent in their homeless populations since 2004.