Manitoba sending delegation to Houston to look at model that housed thousands of homeless people

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Peggy

The Manitoba government is sending a delegation to Houston as it attempts to learn from the U.S. city’s success in housing tens of thousands of homeless people.

Bernadette Smith, the minister responsible for housing, addictions and homelessness, will lead the team of provincial and city officials, along with Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett and Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook, flying to the most populous city in Texas.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew wants the delegation to come together around one strategy to address homelessness.

While many people are already doing work in that area, there’s room for collaboration, said Kinew.

“I don’t know if it’s fractured, or it’s just that so many people with good intentions have started their own initiatives, and as a result they’re each pursuing their own set of priorities,” he told host Marcy Markusa during a Wednesday interview with CBC Manitoba’s Information Radio.

“But the idea that us, as a funder and us as a convening force, as your Manitoba government, that we need to bring everyone together into one cohesive direction.”

The province has also invited people working on the front lines of the homelessness sector to join the delegation, the premier said.

Several people gather in a bus shelter with glass walls on a busy city street. — People experiencing homelessness find cover in a bus shelter in downtown Winnipeg in a 2022 photo. ‘We need to just say, “We’re getting people off the street, we’re getting them into housing,”‘ Premier Wab Kinew told CBC Radio on Wednesday. (Darren Bernhardt/CBC)

The group will explore how Houston has united organizations working to address homelessness and politicians toward a single mission of finding housing for people in need.

The Texas city has become renowned around the world for putting a roof over the heads of 30,000 people struggling with homelessness in just over a decade.

The “Houston model,” as it’s known, relies heavily on a “housing first” approach and a co-ordinated network of organizations that all work on the same wavelength.

It has been cited by both Kinew and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham as an approach to emulate. Gillingham’s office made its own visit to Houston last year.

On Wednesday, Kinew said he anticipates his government’s delegation will spend time together, over meals and in meetings, “really coalescing around this one plan.”

“We can’t have turf wars. We can’t have people arguing about what the right approach is,” Kinew told Information Radio.

“We need to just say, ‘We’re getting people off the street, we’re getting them into housing, and then we’re giving them the mental health and addictions support and access to health care that’s necessary for them to succeed in that housing.'”

During last year’s election campaign, Kinew vowed to eliminate chronic homelessness within eight years. He’s pledged to connect individuals who’ve been without a home for six weeks or longer with housing and mental health supports.