Keeping up with demand

Housing First teams struggle with limited financial and staff resources for several reasons: their clients are not graduating from support services as quickly as had been envisaged; some clients require re-housing, often on several different occasions. Changing deeply entrenched patterns of behavior requires hard work, persistence and patience, both for the people who are newly housed and for those there to support them. Flexibility is necessary, so that people are given the chances they need. But all this means that there is limited capacity to accept new clients. The provincial Government’s decision to provide only an incremental increase to next year’s support funding will certainly exacerbate the challenge.

Sustainability of Housing First graduates

Many graduates of Housing First still need various supports, but once they have left the program they frequently have difficulty accessing the help they need. On-going rental assistance is extremely important, because even those who have successfully found a job are earning low or modest incomes. Rental assistance, however, wasn’t available, which put people at risk of falling back into homelessness. To address this, the Government of Alberta is now allocating a portion of its rent supplement budget to formerly homeless persons who have graduated from Housing First.  While this assistance is both necessary and welcome, it comes at the expense of other low income households.

Tightening of the rental market

The emphasis on housing clients in the private rental market does entail some risks going forward.  Edmonton’s 10 Year Plan began when rents were low and a rising vacancy rate caused by the recession made it more attractive for landlords to house homeless people.  However, rents are now rising rapidly in Edmonton as vacancy rates decline. Service providers are already experiencing challenges in finding affordable housing units. Homeward Trust and Housing First teams have built strong relationships with landlords over the last 4 years, which means that the willingness of many landlords to house Housing First clients (including major landlords like Boardwalk Equities) has been exemplary.  This provides some assurance that cooperation with landlords will continue - even in a tightening rental market.

Providing permanent supportive housing

The 10 Year Plan sets an ambitious goal for 2014: 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing, for people with intensive needs who need on-site, on-going assistance to remain housed. Service providers say that many of the clients they’re working with simply cannot succeed without such support. There are several obstacles standing in the way of this goal. The first is community opposition to having permanent supportive housing projects located in specific neighbourhoods. The second is a significant reduction in capital construction funding from all three orders of government.

Prevention

The Housing First program focuses primarily on those who are chronically homeless and have a number of complex needs. Some service providers would like more flexibility – the resources to provide low-intensity supports for clients with less complex needs. For example, help with getting proper ID and with a damage deposit may be enough. Or someone who faces eviction because an unexpected expense means they can’t pay that month’s rent just needs a one-off hand up. Preventing homelessness can often be about relatively simple solutions.