The money will be funded through the John Howard Society of P.E.I. for a Housing First program.
The funding is part of $600 million 2013 Economic Action Plan for a homelessness partnering strategy over a five-year period from Apr. 1, 2014 to March 31, 2019.The program is designed to stabilize the lives of homeless individuals for the long-term by moving them into permanent housing and providing support for underlying issues such as addictions and mental health.
The cities of Summerside and Charlottetown will receive $1.4 million and rural areas will get
Two community advisory boards have been created to oversee the distribution of the funding.
Frank Costa, executive director of Community Connections is the chairman of the advisory committee for Summerside and Charlottetown.
“The funding is covered through two areas,” Costa said. “One is rural Prince Edward Island and one part of the funding is for the urban areas of Summerside and Charlottetown.”
He said the first support is to get them housing.
“Most of the $1.4 million over the next five years is to support that Housing First and approximately 40 per cent of that money can still be used for capital projects but the emphasis is on the Housing First model,” Costa said.
There is some housing available in both Summerside and Charlottetown for the program and it’s a matter of accessing it, he said
“There is housing,” Costa said. “Part of that model is working with private sector, public sector, non-profit sector to fill the housing that’s out there. But for the last five years, we’ve been building a lot of housing as well.”
Most of the work through Community Connections was to provide housing for people with disabilities.
“The major issue for our population has been the issue of aging parents who could no longer be the primary caregivers,” Costa said. “That’s where our focus has been.
The community advisory boards for this project are looking at all level of homelessness, particularly in the areas of Summerside and Charlottetown.”
Danny Redmond, chairman of the rural community advisory board said their mandate is to reduce the amount of homelessness in rural Prince Edward Island.
“These funds are part of a five-year contract,” he said. The total annual allocation for rural projects is $143,924 for a total of $719, 620 over the five-year period.”
The announcement was made by Egmont MP Gail Shea Tuesday at Community Connections in Summerside.
