By Sheldon Spackman

Shining a light on homelessness in Lacombe and area

Dec 21, 2018 | 2:14 PM

Lacombe and District Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) has released preliminary results of a survey that looks at the extent of homelessness across rural Alberta.

The count includes 21 Alberta communities and is one of the largest projects to collect rural homelessness data in the world, providing data on each community as well as a needs’ snapshot of the kind of social services being accessed in each.

Susan MacDonald, Executive Director for Lacombe and District FCSS says their count covered the City of Lacombe, Village of Clive and rural areas surrounding those communities.

According to their survey results, roughly 91 individuals were either found to be homeless or at-risk of being homeless during the count conducted between October 14 and November 15 of this year.

“We feel we still didn’t reach everybody,” MacDonald admits. “We’re not surprised because our survey was done through what we call ‘population estimation’. So we’re working with other local agencies, a total of 12 agencies involved in a project and we know that the numbers are even greater.”

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Looking ahead, MacDonald anticipates another survey in the near future, one that’s more condensed and not so many questions.

“What we’ll do with the information is we’ll share it amongst agencies and share it with the City of Lacombe and their strategic housing planning committee,” adds MacDonald. “Also I know down the road the City of Lacombe is planning to do a social development plan, so that information will certainly help us in directions down the road. You know where do we go from here, what kind of planning and strategy do we need to do as a community to address these issues and help with things such as employment and housing and mental health issues.”

Officials with Lacombe and District FCSS say the population estimation data was collected by participating service agencies, with clients who come to access social services over a 30-day period invited to fill out surveys.

Surveys which provide agencies information on the characteristics of the local homeless population (gender, age, etc.) and help the community identify needs and develop strategies to implement resources to support this group. 

MacDonald says the survey is important as rural homelessness often gets overlooked.

“Often people think rural homelessness doesn’t exist,” says MacDonald. “But actually when we look at it and compare it to bigger cities, they’re quite comparable. The problem exists and I think it’s probably escalated over the last four or five years just because of our economic situation and I think that there’s more things that we need to be doing provincially and federally to help those rural communities out.”

MacDonald adds the biggest thing now is to create more awareness about rural homelessness.

“Homelessness or those folks that are struggling with permanent shelter, it is an issue or concern in our community,” states MacDonald. “It’s something we will be working on in the future and we look forward to working with our community partners to address this issue.”

This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Homelessness Partnering Strategy and administered by the Alberta Rural Development Network (ARDN), in partnership with the Family and Community Support Services Association of Alberta (FCSSAA).

Lacombe and District FCSS was one of the 14 organizations in Alberta granted funding to carry out a population estimation count with seven others funded internally.

The agency also received additional funding from the City of Lacombe’s Affordable Housing Initiative. 

Other communities that took part in the rural homeless population estimation included Ponoka, Drayton Valley, Peace River, MD of Greenview, County of Grande Prairie, Hinton, Wetaskiwin, Strathmore, Fort McLeod, Spruce Grove / Stoney Plain, Okotoks, Camrose, Banff / Canmore, Grande Cache, Jasper, Drumheller, Kainai Nation, Athabasca, Lac La Biche and Bonnyville.

Officials anticipate a full provincial report to be available by March or April of 2019.