The Shelter House is looking to expand its alcohol management program by moving into the former EMS building on Donald Street.
Executive director Patty Hajdu said they will be asking city council on Monday to consider their bid to buy the building so they can add about five more beds for a total of 20.
The current building located beside the George Street shelter is a two-storey building, which isn’t ideal for people with mobility and alcohol problems, Hajdu said.
“Donald Street is a single-storey unit and we could expand to 20 beds,” she said, adding there’s potential for a small clinic to be housed in the building.
The organization would ideally keep the building the program is currently housed in and use it to expand its youth services.
Twenty-five per cent of the Shelter House population is youth ages 16 to 24.
“Mixing homeless youth with homeless adults is not the healthiest way to provide emergency shelter,” she said.
Shelter House will also be giving council an update on the program’s progress this coming Monday as the city helped fund the George Street building’s renovations last year.
The program serves both men and women that are severely homeless, restricted from other services in the community and have a chronic alcohol issue.
It’s been full since it started.
The program also aims to reduce the load on emergency services like the police, EMS and the hospital’s emergency room.
Hajdu said they’ve seen success on those fronts and the University of Victoria is conducting a study on the program to assess the numbers and determine what the actual reduction is in the use of those services.
The program gives its residents a dose of alcohol every 90 minutes in order to help people move from binge drinking or drinking non-palatable alcohol towards more manageable drinking, said Hajdu.
“The benefit of that is it’s a much cheaper solution for society because we have people that are stable. They’re sleeping in their house every night. They’re eating properly. Their health is improving. They’re using less emergency services,” she said.
The program costs $450,000 a year to run, or about $80 per person a day. According to the Calgary Homelessness Foundation, it costs $130,000 a year to support one homeless person using emergency services and shelters.
“That’s enormous savings for our society,” said Hajdu.
Current River ward Coun. Andrew Foulds said he doesn’t think there is any doubt more beds are needed.
“I don’t think there is any denying we have a large number of individuals that require these resources,” he said.
“I think if there is an opportunity to expand, it’s certainly worthy of consideration,” he added.
Having the ER and police deal with these individuals is inefficient and there is clearly a need for the alcohol management program, Foulds said.
“This community really needs to decide on how best to deal with this and I think increasing the number of beds is the right decision,” he said.
