Wally Czech, city housing first specialist in Lethbridge, Alta. spoke at a session on Coordinated Access Systems offered by the Canadian Association to End Homelessness in Prince Albert Thursday. (file photo/Brady Bateman)

By Brady Bateman

Helping the homeless

Discussing solutions to fight homelessness

Mar 7, 2019 | 2:19 PM

A meeting was held Thursday at the John M Cuelenaere Library by the Canadian Association to End Homelessness to discuss Coordinated Access Systems.

Brian Howell, with Riverbank Development Corporation, told paNOW the meeting would discuss a number of topics, all pertaining to combating homelessness.

“One of the things we do at Riverbank is mange the funding for the Homelessness Partnering Strategy in Prince Albert,” Howell said. “That’s the program that delivers $546,000 per year to projects that fight homelessness within our community. That funding is from the federal government and is being renewed in 2019 on April 1.”

Howell noted changes were made to the programming, which requires communities to develop a coordinated access approach to homelessness, and a system-based approach so organizations targeting homelessness can work together more efficiently.

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“The idea is that by working together according to a coordinated access model we can more effectively meet the needs of homeless people in the community and better use resources,” Howell said. “The federal government has been funding these homelessness efforts since the 1990s, and they’ve moved to five-year funding cycle, so back in 2014 we signed an agreement that ended in 2019 and required us to incorporate a housing-first model. This time around we’re trying to make it work a little bit more effectively.”

Coordinated Access Systems have been in place in the United States for several years and are currently being implemented in a number of Canadian communities. Coordinated Access Systems are designed to streamline the process for people experiencing homelessness to access the housing and support services needed to end their homelessness.

A guest speaker was also present at the event. Wally Czech, city Housing First specialist for Lethbridge, Alta. spoke on the importance of implementing Coordinated Access Systems to help those who are not only fighting to combat homelessness, but also to those experiencing it.

Reaching Homes, which replaces Prince Albert’s current Homelessness Partnering Strategy, requires implementation of this system by 2022 for all communities receiving homelessness funding from the federal government.

“Homelessness in our community is a real issue,” Howell said. “We’ve had some successes but there are still people out there sleeping on the streets and accessing shelters so we really need to work together to make sure we have a good supply of affordable housing and there is good access to income support for people who can’t make it on their own.”

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brady.bateman@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @TheDigitalBirdy