Winnipeg homeless agency faces closure, calls for government funding

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This article was published 01/12/2021 (1120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A Winnipeg social services agency is calling for an overhaul of how governments prevent homelessness, after announcing that dozens of Point Douglas residents will be pushed onto the street next month.

“We are never going to end homelessness, unless we stop with the stop gap measures,” said Angela McCaughan, the head of Sscope Inc.

Sscope (which stands for Self-starting Creative Opportunities for People in Employment) has served homeless people with mental health and addiction issues since 1991, offering paid jobs and training in addition to a place to sleep.

Sscope moved from Arlington Street into the former Neechi Commons building at 865 Main St. in August 2020 after the Assiniboine Credit Union agreed to lease the building for a year, with the intent that Sscope would then take over the building.

The building houses 46 people and provides an additional 40 overnight spaces. It also hosts Sscope’s revenue-generating thrift store, bike shop and bakery.

The agency applied for various government funds and held out for hope for the rapid housing initiative, a federal government program that funds retrofitting under-used buildings into housing for vulnerable people.

The credit union extended the group’s lease until January, as it awaited a final answer.

This week, the group learned its second attempted at the federal fund had failed, which McCaughan said was the last hope before Sscope will need to move elsewhere in Winnipeg.

Until then, her team will have to push 86 people onto the streets on Jan. 6, and leave another 97 without jobs or volunteer opportunities.

“We’re not abandoning them; there is no way that is going to happen. But there is no reason we cannot stay in this building,” she said in an interview.

Sscope made two applications to acquire the building and retrofit the upstairs office space into housing. Both proposals were submitted under a process in which city hall prioritizes the projects within a quota set by Ottawa.

Last year, Winnipeg got $12.5 million to spend. The city yielded 33 applications, 13 of which the city deemed viable but only five of which received funding under the spending quota. Sscope’s $3.9-million proposal didn’t make the cut.

This year’s round of $12.8 million is still under deliberation, but Sscope learned this week that its smaller pitch for $2.7 million also didn’t qualify.

“Everybody complains about homelessness and people sleeping in bus shelters, but nobody is willing to do what it takes to end it,” McCaughan said.

The federal agency overseeing the rapid housing initiative had no explanation.

“To protect the confidentiality of our partners, we are not able to discuss specific projects,” wrote Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. spokesman Leonard Catling.

“We will continue to work… closely with unsuccessful applicants and other levels of government, to find positive housing solutions.”

That’s the best path forward, according to Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux, who was making inquiries Thursday as to what happened with Sscope, which sits in his Winnipeg North riding.

Ahead of an evening meeting with McCaughan, Lamoureux said the rapid housing program has had a huge demand, but he noted other mixes of funding are available from Ottawa, provinces and the city.

“There are eligibility requirement that have to be met, and the program itself is well over-subscribed, so there will be projects that will be turned down,” Lamoureux said.

“I’d like to believe that there are ways we can keep this thing open; any way that we can provide housing, especially the type of housing they have provided… we need to support it in any way that we can.”

The NDP have been critical of the Liberals’ housing strategy, noting that the rapid housing initiative’s first round of applications a year ago garnered $4.6 billion in viable proposals, but had only been expanded to fund a total of $2.5 billion this past summer.

“The federal government is failing on the right to housing,” Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan wrote Thursday.

But McCaughan is frustrated the program she applied to has already funded shelters that she argues don’t actually break the cycle of homelessness.

“It’s temporary; it doesn’t work. We need to spend the money in order to stabilize people, because that’s what alleviates the system.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca