Iqaluit homeless money gets mixed results

SARA MINOGUE

After two years of federal funding for projects designed to help the homeless in Iqaluit, a review finds that just three out of eight programs are successful.

From 2002 to 2004, the City of Iqaluit spent $1,302,780 on eight programs designed to help homeless people make changes in their lives to help them find jobs, homes and self-esteem.

Money came from the federal government’s Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative, or “skippy,” program, and was handed out to various community groups through the Niksiit committee, a sub-committee of city council, which funds social programs in Iqaluit.

The Niksiit committee is about to receive another chunk of federal money for the second half of the SCPI project, but a community consultation prepared by Innunik Productions & Associates finds that not all of the original eight programs were a success.

In the Report on the Public Consultation on the City of Iqaluit’s Continuum of Care Homelessness Plan, just three programs were considered successful.

An informal “Safe Houses for Children” program cost only $6,400, and provided a safe place for kids who were afraid to go home. Money was used to help volunteers buy books, educational materials and nutritional snacks for the kids.

The Nunamiut Care Camp, delivered by Inunnik Productions, was also a hit. Last fall, the camp took five parties of eight to 10 homeless or near homeless adults and children on the land outside Iqaluit for a week at a time at a cost of only $48,440.

The Tukisigiarvik Centre, a place to get “friendship, counselling and advice” opened in July last year, and now sees two or three clients a day, as well as four or five Justice referrals a week.

Ninety thousand dollars was budgeted for the creation of the Isumatsaqsiurvik Detoxification Centre, but it never materialized. The centre would have offered an emergency place for four or five drunk people to spend the night rather than go home to their families.

The Illitiit Society, which was charged with launching the program, cancelled the project when they realized that $90,000 was insufficient. Instead, they diverted the money to buy a house for the Youth Cottage program.

The Youth Cottage is a house in downtown Iqaluit that provides four to five youth who have been released from jail with a temporary place to stay while they try to find jobs, go to school or reconnect with their families. Funding is still unstable.

A program called Transitional Housing for the Battered and the Batterer, run by the Agvvik Society, was successful in making a duplex in Apex available for single men, women or small families who needed a temporary place to stay. In public consultations, however, concerns were raised that the house served only the victims of abuse, and did not meet the Continuum of Care plan’s objectives, which are to provide support and shelter for both the abused and the abuser.

The Iqalummiunut Care Facility, operated by the department of Health and Social Services, houses 12 people who suffer from mental illnesses.

The Niksiit committee allocated $390,240 of funding to the program, but operating costs are at least one million dollars per year, and the report’s authors are concerned that patients and nurses are too isolated from the community.

The final program under the Continuum of Care plan was a conceptual one. The Niksiit committee wanted to fund the design of small, affordable, and easy to maintain houses built along traditional lines. No action has been taken, but public consultation found considerable interest in reviving the idea.

The report recommends raising funding levels to provide 12 months of operation for five of the projects: Safe Houses for Children; Transition programming and Transitional Housing for the Battered and the Batterer; the Community Tukisigiarvik Centre; the Youth Cottage; and the Nunamiut Care Camp.

On top of the programs that fell under the Continuum of Care plan, the report made a strong recommendation: “That as a matter of high priority, the City of Iqaluit, the GN Department of Health and Social Services, and the Inuit land claims organizations pursue federal funding for the full-time operation and adequate supervision and maintenance of the Oqota Emergency Shelter and for a similar facility for homeless women and families.”

The Oqota Emergency Shelter in Iqaluit fills 14 beds every night of the year, and sometimes has to turn people away, but it’s not getting enough money to do the job. Inunnik estimates the cost of a full-time emergency shelter would be between $260,000 and $270,000 a year.

The Niksiit committee has approved the report’s recommendations, and will meet to prioritize spending on July 22.