Re: ‘B.C. drafts law to force homeless indoors’ (Daily News, Sept. 22)

The Main Street Project has been serving the needs of Winnipeg’s most vulnerable residents for more than 30 years.

By providing emergency shelter and food services, a drug and alcohol detoxification unit, on-site counselling, transitional housing and a range of other critical services, the project supports clients’ basic needs while giving them the opportunity to make real choices and meaningful progress every day.

The project has served the needs of Winnipeg’s estimated 1,500 to 2,000 homeless persons for more than 32 years, provides for an average 20,000 emergency overnight shelter stays per year, provides more than 6,000 individual crisis services per year, provides counselling and advocacy services to an average of 3,800 individuals a year, provides residential drug and alcohol detoxification services to between 750 and 850 individuals per year, provides for between 150 and 200 individual intakes into transitional housing facility each year and supports the nutritional needs of clients by serving between 400 and 600 cups of soup every day.

Is anyone talking about homeless people on the street because of a range of policies put in place by government?

We don’t appear willing to put a policy in place to rectify the damage of previous policies but are willing to legislate forcible removal to the doorstep of a shelter in inclement weather.

I think it’s time for the B.C. government to look at Winnipeg’s program, which has been running for more than 30 years.

Gordon Youngman

Nanaimo
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The Daily News

Source: http://www.canada.com/Winnipeg+program+homeless+works+well/2032332/story.html