THUNDER BAY – Federal money is being earmarked to address the growing homelessness epidemic in Thunder Bay.
Local service providers will be receiving a combined total of more than $5 million over the next five years through the federal government’s Reaching Home: Canada’s Homeless Strategy, which was formally launched on Friday after the envelope was officially opened at the start of the month.
Having worked as the executive director of Shelter House prior to entering politics, the importance of initiatives targeting homelessness is not lost on Thunder Bay-Superior North MP Patty Hajdu.
Not only does the announcement mean more money for local service providers, Hajdu said, but it gives them some future certainty and ensures stability of funding.
“As communities develop more capacity there’ll be more money so they can act more quickly on the projects they have that they’re working on. I think the best news is that it’s completely community led,” Hajdu said.
“The flexibility of how the community will spend that money is really important. The way Thunder Bay addresses homelessness may be completely different than the way Vancouver addresses homelessness and those realities need to be reflected in funding models.”
The local money will be allocated to the Lakehead Social Planning Council and the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre.
A point-in-time count conducted last year – the second of its kind ever done in Thunder Bay – found that there were 474 people living homeless in the city, compared to 295 in 2016. Two-thirds of those people in this year’s count identified as being Indigenous.
Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP Don Rusnak said local service providers know what individual communities need better than Ottawa.
“It’s about making our society more fair and equitable,” Rusnak said. “It’s a huge amount of money for the city of Thunder Bay and great organizations like the Lakehead Social Planning Council, the Ontario Native Women’s Association and the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre are doing important work and we need to support that work.”
The new homeless strategy aligns with the federal government’s National Housing Strategy, which was launched last year and has a goal of eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada by 50 per cent by 2028 and building 100,000 new units across the country.
The federal and provincial governments last month made a joint funding announcement of $14.4 million through that strategy to create 127 additional units through Northwestern Ontario, including the 24-unit Northern Linkages building on Algoma Street in Thunder Bay.
While that money focuses on brick and mortar infrastructure to give people a place to live, Hajdu said. it’s also important to make sure people have necessary supports to move forward.
The longer somebody lives homeless or experiences a housing crisis, the more detrimental the impact is on their health.
“People get sick, they have mental illness, sometimes increased substance use problems. Being homeless is an extremely painful process, both psychologically and physically. It’s hard to take care of yourself in any way when you don’t have a safe roof over your head,” Hajdu said.
“Part of the reintegration into housing can be for some people those supports that will help them get the care that they need, stabilize in that housing and be able to be successfully adaptive into the community and keep that housing for the long term.”
