NISKU, Alta. — You won’t see many people sleeping on park benches or living under a bridge in small-town Alberta, but it doesn’t mean homelessness doesn’t exist.
Homelessness in rural areas is hidden, says Dee Ann Benard, executive director of the Alberta Rural Development Network.
“Very few people recognize there is a rural homelessness problem, even people in rural communities,” she said during a two-day conference on rural homelessness.
“They may look like they’re housed, but they’re living in substandard housing, or old houses with no heat, no electricity or running water or too many people in one house. Or they’re living in a tent in the bush or they’re couch surfing, going from one place to another until people get sick of you and kick you out and you go to the next one.”
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Good statistics aren’t available on rural homelessness, but a small research study by the University of Calgary did not find any rural communities that didn’t have homelessness, she said.
“It is out there and we have no idea if it is hundreds of people or thousands of people. I am guessing there are thousands of people in rural Alberta that are homeless,” she said.
“We’re socially conditioned to think urban is where the problems are and rural is so idyllic and so pastoral and so good. Unless you look for it, you don’t see it because it is well hidden.”
Benard and rural service agencies are using Service Canada funding that is distributed through the Alberta Rural Development Network to identify homeless people in rural areas and find ways to connect them to the proper services, including housing.
Ten percent of Fort McLeod’s 3,111 population (4,600 if the surrounding area is added) is considered to be homeless, and workers in the community are trying to find housing for them.
“There is a significant number of transient homeless,” said Nicole Jackson, a housing support worker in Fort McLeod.
The town is sandwiched between two First Nation’s reserves, and the poor and homeless from the reserves come looking for support.
Jackson has found homes for 130 people in the two years since the housing program began.
“A lack of housing is the biggest problem in our community,” she said.
“We don’t have any affordable housing or subsidized housing.”
Wayne McCune of Didsbury said a lack of affordable housing is one of the biggest problems in his central Alberta community.
He agreed that the issue is often hidden.
Young people who have left home, either voluntarily or involuntarily, end up sleeping on a friend’s couch, said McCune.
“No one wants to talk about being thrown out of their house. People don’t want to believe it is happening in their small town. They think there little town is perfect,” said McCune, who started a Homelessness Project committee to help find solutions in Didsbury.
“Small towns tend to not talk about the uncomfortable issues.”
Staff with the Boys and Girls Club of Cochrane wanted to build a homeless shelter when they recognized the problem of youth homelessness in their community, but they were quickly shut down.
“We acknowledge our community is not in a place to accept a homeless shelter,” said Adelle Forzley-Wiebe.
Instead, the group looked at Victoria’s successful Safe Couch program as a model for housing homeless youth.
The Boys and Girls Club pays a host family to house a homeless young person, who is connected to a local community resource worker to help deal with issues.
Forzley-Wiebe said there are three main reasons why kids become homeless in Cochrane: family conflict or disruption; mental health and addiction; and physical, emotional and sexual abuse in the home.
She estimates there are 25 to 30 homeless young people in Cochrane.
“We are finding it to be very encouraging,” she said. “A lot of community members are interested in being part of the program.”
Two young people have been matched with families. More families are needed, as is funding to pay the families.
Forzley-Wiebe said the Safe Couch program could easily be adapted to other communities that are reluctant to build large homeless shelters.
“It’s adaptable to a small community,” she said.
“You don’t have to raise the capital to raise a building. You don’t have to worry about NIMBYism (not in my backyard).”
Benard said the Safe Couch program is just one of the homeless projects that the network funds across the province.
It receives less than $500,000 a year from Service Canada for rural areas outside of the province’s seven largest centres. No money is available from the provincial government for rural housing projects.
However, she said the need is large, especially in communities with booming resource-based economies.
In Lac La Biche, rent is $1,500 for a one-bedroom apartment and $2,100 for a two-bedroom apartment. Benard said this is out of reach for anyone except high paid oil workers.
“The resource based communities are booming and the rents go through the roof, or there are so few places and landlords can afford to be really picky,” she said.
“Then there are the more poverty community areas and there is just nothing there. No services ,no affordable housing and landlords get to be very choosy.”
Contact mary.macarthur@producer.com
