By Nigel Maxwell

Spotlight shone on Prince Albert’s homeless community

May 27, 2016 | 6:01 PM

A snapshot of Prince Albert’s homeless community.

That’s how the author of a new study described his findings at city hall today, May 27.

Dr. Chad Nilson with the Living Skies Centre for Social Inquiry helped coordinate the point-in-time survey on homelessness last March.

Over the course of a six-hour period (8 p.m. to 2 a.m) on March 22, two groups spanned the city and talked to people on the street. They conducted surveys in the city’s downtown, as well as West Hill, East Hill and Midtown areas.

“The hardest part is the fact that a lot of people affected by homelessness are not on the street.  They are living with friends or family, they’re living with people that care about them because that’s just the nature of our community,” Nilson said.

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The participants in the study were asked a range of questions including why they believed they were homeless.

The most popular answers were addictions, lack of money and no references.

Of those people living on the street in Prince Albert, the majority were between the ages of 25 and 34, and 85 per cent identified as Aboriginal.

“I think the reality is we have this stigma from the movies and television is that when someone is homeless they live in a cardboard box and push a shopping cart around.  That’s not what happens in Prince Albert. We have individuals that are affected by weather, they are individuals that are on the move and they’re trying to move from building to building just trying to keep active, to keep warm,” Nilson said.

Nilson said a more realistic depiction of a homeless person in Prince Albert is someone who wears a backpack and walks around the city for 12 hours a day.

Individuals who were not staying in a shelter were asked why they chose to do so.

Six people said they did not like the rules and only four said it was because the shelter was full.

Nilson praised the work of the Homeward Bound Program, which has been running in the city since November 2014. (Link; http://panow.com/article/541814/homeless-shelters-prepare-winter)

The program helps get people off the streets and into permanent housing.

Donna Brooks who is the Executive Director of the YWCA and coordinates the Homeward Bound Program said the challenge is not a lack of space but rather a lack of funding.

“We have enough space in the cold weather shelter but where we do need some help is in our housing first program because we only have so many staff and so we can have only so many clients. We actually have quite a waitlist of people waiting to get into homeward bound,” Brooks said.

Brooks estimated there are up to 40 people on the waiting list.

The results of the survey will be used by groups such as the YWCA and Prince Albert Outreach to apply for government funding.

nmaxwell@panow.com

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell