Jump on the bandwagon!

Last December... almost the same today.

This morning, the Edmonton Police Service and City cleanup crews took down a homeless encampment (they've been doing it for weeks) in spite of the fact that there is a court injunction in place until January 11th to protect our homeless folks if there aren't enough places where they can go.

And there aren't enough places for them to go. But the dump trucks came, all the same.

So I'm inviting you to jump on the bandwagon and demand solutions for the homeless people in your midst, wherever you live. All you need to do is let your elected officials know that the issue of people having a roof over their head is important to you, and the officials must do what it takes -- in particular, asking those homeless people what would work for them -- until no one is homeless. I should have put that in this letter -- ask the people in need what they need, and work from that! But I was a bit hot under the collar, oops.

Below, I'm posting the email I sent to my elected officials this morning. May it inspire you to send your own. And if you live in Edmonton, or Alberta, feel free to email me, and I can save you the time it takes to look up city council and provincial politicians relevant to this issue by sending you their email addresses. My pleasure! 

* * * * * * *

 Dear city councilors and provincial politicians, 

 You've heard from me recently, but I am writing once again, and I will write many more times, as necessary. I live in the Holyrood neighbourhood in Edmonton, and volunteer with the Inner City Pastoral Ministry as a member of the ministry team. As lunch coordinator, I help volunteers hand out more than 200 lunches a week to people who come to us from downtown encampments for the homeless every Sunday. I know the homeless community, if not by names, by faces. 

 Today I am very angry and more than a little heartbroken that the Edmonton Police Service and city crews are ignoring the injunction preventing encampment evictions when there isn't enough safe housing for the people who have nowhere else to live. The EPS and the City were supposed to wait until more humane solutions could be found. 

 Homelessness costs the city and province far more than ATCO trailers and support personnel do -- think of all the medical, police/fire/EMT and cleanup costs. Encampment evictions mean these people have nowhere to lay their heads, and they have to start over from square one, begging, borrowing and stealing to build more shelters for themselves -- because you are lacking imagination. Something must be done. 

 All councilors and MLAs could have emergency meetings to determine where empty city lots can hold heated trailers so people don't have to build dangerous fires; so people can have doors that lock to protect themselves and their few belongings while they sleep at night. Shelter beds will never be enough. The women's ATCO trailers set up by the Elizabeth Fry Society on the north side were a good start; keep going!! 

 Alberta has a 5.5 billion dollar surplus. Housing is a human right, and it would take only a fraction of that surplus to solve these problems in a humane way. Our province can show the world what it takes to end homelessness. Imagine how great our province and city would become in the eyes of the world!   

 Dear politicians, I look forward to hearing about the solutions you come up with at your emergency meeting on solving the housing crisis.

Maria K

When ONE is too many

The City of Edmonton's annual homeless count is today. Volunteers endeavor to find and count the homeless people in our city, and I always wonder how accurate their count is. Not very, I suspect.

Yesterday, I drove Lee to his place of work in the Research Park not far from the Anthony Henday ring road, and took Shadow-dog for a walk around the area. It's a lovely area with a couple of ponds and many well-placed trees, not far from South Edmonton Common, a major shopping centre. 

So I wasn't too surprised when I discovered a man with a shopping cart living among the trees in an unused corner of a parking lot. I'm guessing his chance of being counted today is pretty much nil.

The Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness (ECOHH) sent other volunteers out today with a handbill containing some of the info you'll read below. ECOHH wants to raise awareness of the fact that a count of the homeless population doesn't really do much to solve anything. However, the handbill did manage to shock a group of teenagers when they read that 222 people died on Edmonton's streets in 2021, compared to 132 in 2020. It's clear that serious issues for homeless people are increasing.

It's one thing to gather statistics on how many people are homeless, and another to solve the lack of non-market affordable housing. Homeward Trust, a local social service organization that has a program called Housing First, notes on its website homepage that 2,671 people are currently experiencing homelessness. Of them, 56% identify as Indigenous, 45% as female, and 18% as youth.

In a wealthy province and country called Alberta, Canada, even ONE homeless person is too many.

Even more shocking, it's estimated that more than a quarter million people in our country will experience homelessness at some point this year.

Edmonton City Council is doing what it can, but the real problem is that provincial and federal funding for affordable housing and support services has been completely inadequate since the 1980s. Adequate housing is a human right, one the 2,671 people known to Homeward Trust lack. And that number doesn't begin to address the tens of thousands of people who are living in unsafe, unhealthy, inadequate, or too expensive places, people who are in danger of becoming homeless themselves for any number of reasons.

So what do we do? For the moment, we can write Premier Jason Kenney (premier@gov.ab.ca) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca) and tell them it's past time to invest in actually building desperately needed housing. They need to be reminded that it has been proven, time and again, that giving people a roof over their heads is more fiscally responsible than leaving them to fend for themselves on the streets. Otherwise, governments end up investing more taxpayer funds to care for homeless people than investments in housing and wrap-around care require.

Even one homeless person is too many. Especially when you come upon one who seems to be dying on the sidewalk before your eyes, as I did on Sunday morning.

If you are able, please click those email addresses and write to ask that federal and provincial governments invest in affordable housing and wrap-around care. If you're not from Alberta, it's easy to computer search your own politicians. 

It's time to #endhomelessnessyeg. And everywhere else, too.

December 5, 2021
There's a much longer line of tents now...