'Same-day housing' program part of Manitoba Liberals proposal for combatting homelessness crisis

The Manitoba Liberals have released a four-point plan for addressing homelessness that draws on examples from other Canadian jurisdictions, including a rapid housing program designed to put a roof over the head of anyone who needs it right away.

"There is a serious crisis in homelessness, and some of it is that it's been a crisis for so long that we've accepted that it can't be any other way," Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said at a Tuesday news conference, where the plan was unveiled. 

"This has to change."

Lamont, who represents St. Boniface and is one of three Liberal MLAs currently in the Manitoba legislature, accused successive New Democrat and Progressive Conservative governments of failing to adequately address homelessness.

The party's plan outlines four pillars, including a commitment to "same-day housing" and the creation of a dashboard of services that would be updated daily.

It would also include a renewed focus on the disproportionate rates of homelessness experienced by Indigenous people, and an income-support and employment-training program that would factor in how individuals end up without a home.

Liberal MLA and physician Dr. Jon Gerrard said the same-day housing plan would be modelled after one being used in Medicine Hat, which he recently visited.

He said he talked with a person who had experienced homelessness both in that southeastern Alberta city and in Winnipeg.

"He told me … 'I was in Medicine Hat. It's like day and night compared to Winnipeg,'" the River Heights MLA said.

"There, he said, they wouldn't even let you be homeless. They put him right away in a motel and gave him all the information about what his options were and supports. And here [in Winnipeg], he was living in a bus shelter, with no help."

Lamont said people looking for stable housing in Manitoba don't qualify for the support they most need until they've been chronically homeless for six months.

"Obviously we will never end homelessness, so long as we're tolerating people being homeless for six months before we're willing to help them," he said.

The party wasn't yet able to say how many additional housing units would be required for the same-day housing strategy nor how much it would cost.

Reconciliation approach

The plan's second pillar is about embracing the notion of housing the homeless as an act of reconciliation. 

Results of the 2022 Winnipeg street census survey found 92 per cent of the 1,200 people encountered during the 24-hour survey period identified as Indigenous, even though Indigenous people represented about 13 per cent of the city population in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

Over half of the homeless Indigenous people identified in the street census also said they went through the Manitoba Child and Family Services system. 

The Liberals say this piece of their plan would include changes to that system, such as more transitional supports for people aging out of care and extending the age of eligibility for those supports to 26. 

"Too many kids right now on their 18th birthday are being sent to a shelter because there's no plan or no good way to help them," Gerrard said.

Income, employment supports

The plan's third pillar focuses on a "path toward self-reliance" aimed at providing things like income- and employment-training supports.

That program would also assess the underlying factors that contributed to people becoming homeless, whether those be poverty, addictions, mental health challenges, a history with the CFS system, learning disabilities, conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or fetal alcohol syndrome, or being part of the 2SLGBTQ community.

Last fall's street census found about 11 per cent of people identified as two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or another identity under the 2SLGBTQ banner, and they tended to be younger on average than the rest of the homeless population.

Many people who end up without a home fell through cracks in the education system because they had learning disabilities and that weren't spotted early on, leading them to struggle in school and drop out, Gerrard said.

Services dashboard

He also said greater integration is needed across groups and government departments dedicated to homelessness issues. The final pillar of the Liberal plan would seek to address that.

It revolves around the creation of a dashboard that would be updated every day to identify where people living on the streets, and organizations that help them, can find available shelter spaces, warming locations, food and other services, the Liberals said.

Gerrard said the value of public dashboards has been demonstrated during the pandemic, when many governments — including Manitoba's — maintained such online portals to track COVID-19 information.

Lamont said the "enormous costs" associated with not providing supports like these outweigh the proposed spending on issues tied to homelessness.

"The worse we treat people, the more it costs us, and that is something that has been hurting Manitobans," he said.