A federal funding boost will see the County of Simcoe further streamline their operations to help the homeless county-wide, and community partners from Collingwood to Orillia, Barrie to Alliston are all pitching in to help.
On April 1, 2019, the federal government introduced a redesigned 10-year National Homelessness Strategy, including implementation of a new program called Reaching Home.
Simcoe County will be seeing a $2.2 million investment through the program, which is intended to support the most vulnerable Canadians in maintaining safe, stable and affordable housing, with the ultimate goal of reducing national chronic homelessness by 50 per cent by 2027-2028.
The County of Simcoe says Service Canada advised that the initial five-year allocation will total $2,236,608. Broken down, for the first two years the county will receive $336,906 annually, after ward receiving $520,932 annually through 2024.
“The benefits of co-ordinating services, really, is that we want a system where any door is the right door,” said Jan Janssen, director of children and community services with the County of Simcoe.
“Anyone experiencing homelessness can walk into any agency’s door and know that they’ll be assisted or referred to whichever agency is most appropriate. They’ll be brought into the system in a co-ordinated way.”
“I think it really means that people won’t fall through the cracks,” she said.
The initial funding will be used to hire a full-time, temporary research analyst position, projected at a cost of $73,300, in conjunction with funding through the provincial Ministry of Education.
Funding will also be used to hire a project co-ordinator -- pending county council approval -- to be housed in a community service provider agency, and related project costs to develop a co-ordinated online access system that will be accessible county-wide.
Under the federal government’s current Homelessness Partnership Strategy, these funds have been administered at the local level by a designated Community Entity (CE), in consultation with a local Community Advisory Board (CAB).
This function will now be performed by the County of Simcoe as of April 1.
Members of the Community Advisory Board include Chair Sara Peddle of the David Busby Centre in Barrie, Fiona Proctor of 211 Community Connections in Collingwood, Steven Pelletier of The Guesthouse in Midland, as well as representatives from Youth Haven, the Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness and the United Way of Simcoe-Muskoka.
A total of 61 communities across Canada, defined by Employment and Social Development Canada as having significant problems with homelessness, were selected to receive support.
“We were able to demonstrate the need through our 2018 Homelessness Enumeration. We have a mix of urban and rural areas. While more services are in those urban areas, and people tend to move that way, the folks who don’t, don’t have accessible services,” said Janssen.
“I think there’s just that recognition that in Simcoe County, a lot of people come here. There are 14 homeless people for every 10,000 (county-wide),” she added.
While the federal government made the announcement this week that Barrie will receive $2,671,808 through the Reaching Home program, questions concerning the disparity in amounts promised against what will be received were not answered by publication time.
