By Dori Modney (@Dori_Modney on Twitter) wtih files from the City of Lethbridge

More than 45 Lethbridge teams take part in province-wide homeless count

Oct 20, 2016 | 2:27 PM

LETHBRIDGE –  Numbers won’t be available until November, however, Lethbridge was one of the seven provincial cities that took part Wednesday in the Alberta’s second province-wide Point-in-Time Count of homelessness.

 It’s part of a 10-year plan to end homelessness across the province. The other cities taking part were the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Grand Prairie, Edmonton, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, and Calgary.

About 150 volunteers were divided into more than 45 teams that fanned out across the city for the count.  They included community members, business people, representatives from the Lethbridge Police Service, non-profit agency outreach teams, the University of Lethbridge, and Lethbridge College.

The information gathered by the teams will be compiled by an independent consultant, with preliminary numbers released next month and a province-wide report will be provided to the government in 2017.  

In 2014, the Alberta Point-in-Time Count found 140 individuals who identified as homeless.  Of that number, 129 people accessed the Lethbridge Emergency Shelter, interim supportive housing and other public systems. The other eleven people were deemed to be “sleeping rough”.

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Lethbridge’s Social Housing in Action (SHIA) is one of the community organizations in the province that works with the Ministry of Human Services to implement strategies set out in the  government’s 10-year plan.  The main focus for SHIA is ‘Housing First’, and the belief that every person has the right to a safe, secure and permanent home.

Data from previous “Point-in-Time” counts provided information that was used to create and assess homeless strategies.  Since efforts to address homelessness began in 2008, the number of people living on the street decreased about 15 per cent across the seven participating cities.