January 11 News Items

Volunteers ready for Calgary’s first homeless count since 2008

Calgary Herald, Jamie Komarnicki, January 10, 2012

CALGARY — A team of volunteers is preparing to fan out across city streets in a five-hour effort to figure out how many people are homeless in Calgary. The first homeless count here in almost four years is also expected to provide the Calgary Homeless Foundation solid clues about how well its mission to end homelessness by 2018 is working. “For as long as we’ve been counting homeless people in Calgary, the number’s been going up,” said foundation head Tim Richter. “This will be the first test, the first indication of whether or not the plan to end homelessness is working.”

The count is planned for an evening within the next couple weeks. About 180 volunteers will count the occupants in more than 70 shelters in Calgary. At the same time, they’ll tally the number of “rough sleepers” on the streets. The group aims to cover as much ground as possible, venturing further from the city’s core than previous counts. “We’ll be canvassing through the city, going through areas where we know there tend to be people staying,” Richter said. “We know the rough sleepers are getting further and farther afield outside of downtown. We’ll be covering as much of the city as we can possibly get to.”

The count is no small task. The homeless foundation has been working with outreach agencies, bylaw, parks, police and EMS to get a sense of where to find the city’s homeless. The volunteers will be placed on teams assigned to different zones to comb through the city. They also plan to distribute a survey to rough sleepers. The count is expected to take about five hours, Richter said.

Snapshot counts had been done in Calgary every two year since 1992. After the 2008 tally, the city decided to cancel its biennial count. The task has now fallen to the homeless foundation, which is using the population tracking to gain a better idea about homelessness in Calgary. The city’s homeless numbers climbed from around 400 in 1992 to roughly 4,000 in 2008, Richter noted. The homeless foundation is working to bring the numbers down, but Richter said he’d consider a levelling out of numbers a sign of progress. “To stop that kind of increase would be an achievement in itself. If we can turn it around, that’s even better.”

While valuable, the one night count has limitations. The data only portrays what happens on one day. Homelessness, however, can fluctuate quickly with people cycling in, then out of a shelter after just a short stint. But the snapshot does provide one of the few population data benchmarks to gauge Calgary’s 10-year plan to end homelessness.

Myron Krause, executive director of the Mustard Seed, said the shelter has been working hard to transition people into affordable housing. He’s eager to see if the work, one of the major planks of the city’s 10-year plan, is reflected in the homeless count. The shelter has seen a slight increase in occupants between 2010 and 2011, he said. Two shelters were closed in Calgary during that time because of dropping demand, he noted. The homeless foundation plans to provide some preliminary results in early February, with the final information released within the next two months.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Volunteers+ready+Calgary+first+homeless+count+since+2008/5975824/story.html#ixzz1jAFdzXjr

 

 Homeless to be counted in Calgary (radio interview in link)

CBC, January 10, 2012

Efforts are underway to count the number of homeless people living on Calgary streets. The plan is to complete the tally in one night, with volunteers surveying more than70 facilities as well as trying to locate people sleeping outside.  A comprehensive count has not been done since 2008, when there were 4,000 people found to be homeless in the city. That was the same year the Calgary Homeless Foundation launched its ten year plan to end homelessness. “This is an important opportunity for us to answer a really critical question and that is — is the 10 year plan working?,” said the foundation’s CEO Tim Richter.

Since point-in-time counts were first begun in 1992, Calgary has typically seen 20 to 30 per cent increases every two years, he said. Mustard Seed executive director Myron Krause is optimistic that the number will be lower. “We’ve seen an average of 150 people every year moved out of our shelter into homes of their own. So we believe that has made a difference in individual lives, overall we will have to see if that has made a difference in the city,” Krause said.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2012/01/10/calgary-homelessness-count.html

 

 News Hour –  Homeless census (video in link)

Global TV Calgary, January 10, 2012

http://www.globaltvcalgary.com/video/homeless+census/video.html?v=2185634035#top+stories

Montreal man shot by police exposes cracks in mental health care: experts

Postmedia News, Linda Gyulai, January 10, 2012

MONTREAL — Farshad Mohammadi would scream naked outside his apartment at night, threaten neighbours, remove the toilet bowl from the washroom in his one-room flat and was behind on paying his rent. But that behaviour, described by his former landlord and others who came into contact with him during the past year, did not land him in an institution or get him expelled from a federal independent housing program for homeless people with mental-health problems.

It did, however, get him evicted in early December, said his former landlord, Albert Sleiman. Sleiman said he was out of town on vacation when he saw the news Friday that Mohammadi was shot and killed by Montreal police after he stabbed an officer in the Bonaventure subway station. “I was lucky I wasn’t the one who got stabbed,” Sleiman remarked after returning from vacation on Monday, adding he confronted Mohammadi about his behaviour on three occasions.

In fact, Sleiman said Mohammadi threatened him when he showed up to execute the eviction notice. That prompted police officers, who had accompanied Sleiman, to remove Mohammadi from the apartment. “We need specialized places for people like that,” Sleiman said. “Some people need 24-hours’ surveillance.”

On that, he has the agreement of an expert who has worked with homeless people with mental health problems for more than 20 years. “I get the impression the man wasn’t stable,” Isabelle Leduc, director of Chambreclerc, a non-profit organization that runs rooming houses for homeless people with mental health problems. “In my experience, people who are homeless and have mental health problems and who aren’t stable need to be hospitalized, often (for) a long period,” she said. “After they’re stabilized, they can be placed in a program that’s in a community.”

The problem is a shortage of psychiatric beds, Leduc said. “That’s what is missing in the system,” she said. Hospitals often aren’t keen to take homeless people with mental health problems, she said.

“It’s nice to bring services into the community, but the fact remains that some people are so sick they need to be hospitalized. After that, they can use support and an apartment. But it often starts with hospitalization.”

The problem, say experts, has its roots in the Quebec government’s so-called “virage ambulatoire” of 1995-98, a transformation of mental-health services in the province from hospital-based to community-based services that was driven by provincial budget-cutting. The province closed hospitals, slashed personnel and put thousands of patients on the street, but with a pledge to transfer money to community services for those former patients. However, experts say less than one-quarter of the money cut from hospital services was ever reinvested in community services.

A federally-funded research program called At Home rented the apartment for Mohammadi last year. Mohammadi was one of three tenants Sleiman said he’s taken from At Home. The other two tenants have behaved well, Sleiman said. Despite Mohammadi’s death, At Home’s Montreal co-ordinator calls the program a success.

At Home, which works with partners in hospitals and universities, has found housing for 1,000 homeless people with mental illnesses across the country — 285 of them in Montreal — since it was officially launched in five cities in 2009 with $110 million from the federal government, co-ordinator Sonia Cote said. Another 1,000 homeless people across the country are getting support to ask for services that are available in the community.

Of the 285 homeless people whom At Home placed in apartments around Montreal, 225 are still living on their own, and with an improved quality of life, Cote said. The nearly 80-per-cent retention rate is a measure of success, she said. Under the program, a homeless person puts 30 per cent of their revenue from welfare or other sources towards the rent, and the program covers the balance.

Of the other 60 people, some have been hospitalized, some are in prison and some have dropped out of sight, Cote said. At Home has dropped only one person from the program in Montreal for “extremely threatening and violent” behaviour, she said. Otherwise, violence and threats are not a reason alone to expel someone from the program, Cote said.

Federal funding for At Home will run out in March 2013, Cote said. Talks are going on with the Quebec government to have the province continue subsidizing rents to allow the program to continue.

At Home has launched an internal review of Mohammadi’s file, Cote said. However, confidentiality requirements won’t allow her to discuss details of Mohammadi’s case, even once they’re known, she said.

Like every other participant, Mohammadi would have been recruited either in a shelter by At Home’s recruiters or referred by a shelter or institution, Cote said.

http://www.canada.com/news/Montreal+shot+police+exposes+cracks+mental+health+care+experts/5975449/story.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter