Boyle Street and Bissell Centre Funding
Back in 2020, Edmonton City Council started providing temporary funding for day shelter space operated by Boyle Street and Bissell Centre. Later this spring, that temporary funding will end and I want to share more details about how that decision was made and what needs to be done.
As I do in almost every post related to people experiencing homelessness I must start by clearly stating that housing, shelter operations, and mental health/addictions support are provincial jurisdiction.
Even though those areas are provincial jurisdiction, the City of Edmonton has been working to fill in gaps as best we can within our financial capacity. The challenge that many municipalities across Alberta face is that our financial capacity is getting to be very limited while our population expands rapidly. If you haven’t had a chance to read my blog about Edmonton’s rapid population growth, over 100,000 people in 2 years, please read this post first.
One of the key points of that post is how over the 2019-2022 budget cycle, Edmonton City Council kept property taxes artificially low as we worked through the uncertainty of the pandemic. Not only did we have the lowest tax increases and first tax freeze in 25 years, we weren’t keeping up with our population growth. At the same time, provincial funding to municipalities continued to drop on a regular basis which created even more financial pressure.
I was on the last council and while I believe we made the right decision at the time due to the challenges everyone faced during the pandemic, when you aren’t keeping up with inflation and population growth, there are real impacts.
One of the impacts we had to deal with was the significant rise in the number of people experiencing homelessness. While homelessness was on the decline going into 2019, we saw homelessness double between 2019-2023.
Until a few months ago, Edmonton had a significant shortfall in the number of shelter spaces. We had approximately 622 and we needed approximately 1,700 spaces. In 2020, Edmonton City Council started providing funding to Boyle Street and Bissell Centre so they could provide daytime spaces for people experiencing homelessness as most shelters were not operating 24/7.
Funding continued each year while former Mayor Iveson and then Mayor Sohi advocated to the provincial government to fill the massive gap in shelter funding in Edmonton. You can learn more about the ongoing advocacy by Mayor Sohi in this post. Fortunately, after years of advocacy, the provincial government finally increased funding in order to add over 1,100 new shelter spaces over the last 6 months.
In total, funding specifically for day shelters to Bissell Centre and Boyle Street will total over $16 million. This doesn’t include other funding that the City of Edmonton provides for these two organizations totaling over $27 million over the same period. This also doesn’t include funding the City of Edmonton provided to organizations like Jasper Place Wellness Centre to run a 24/7 winter shelter ($7.5 million) last winter or funding to operate other City buildings as winter shelter spaces in previous years.
Most of this funding was used to cover areas that are the jurisdiction of the provincial government. Beyond funding for more reactive solutions, the City of Edmonton approved $183 million in funding to help build affordable housing and 24/7 supportive housing. Again, this is not our jurisdiction but we are in a crisis and it requires action from all orders of government.
With the rising costs that everyone is facing, we have now taken our ‘rainy day’ fund below the minimum balance. The Financial Stabilization Reserve (FSR) is designed to have funding for approximately 2 months of City operations in case of serious emergencies. The FSR grows when we finish the year with a surplus, which is the case in 12 of the last 15 years.
Over the last 4 years, Council has used the FSR to fund emergent issues, like the day shelter spaces, instead of raising property taxes to build in permanent ongoing funding. While the FSR was in reasonably good shape 4 years ago, funding shelter services each year while we awaited a permanent resolution from the provincial government has now put us in a position where the FSR is below the minimum balance required in policy. Our policy requires that once the FSR drops below the minimum balance, we have 3 years to bring the balance back to the minimum.
It’s not easy to have to choose between continuing an important service like this or further decreasing our FSR but considering the financial pressures that everyone is facing and the fact that we now have an additional 1,100 shelter spaces compared to this time last year, we are in a better position to help with some of the interim needs for people experiencing homelessness without further depleting the FSR.
But we are far from where we need to be in this province. There was a recent story from CBC which you can read here where they clearly show how many more people experiencing homelessness are losing their lives each year.
It’s a troubling trend that won’t get better until we see enough 24/7 supportive housing and recovery beds for every person. There is still no clear plan from the provincial government on when there will be enough beds but since they are the ones that operate these beds, there’s no way for us to fill that gap on our own.
Over the 2023-2026 budget cycle, we are expecting to see another 2,700 units of housing built. This includes both affordable housing and 24/7 supportive housing. As noted in my blog post from January, “644 units of the 2.807 units from 2019-2022 were 24/7 supportive housing so it’s fair to assume we could see a similar number built by 2026. That would leave us approximately 1,000 units short of what is needed in Edmonton. Currently, there is no clear plan from the provincial or federal government to fill that need.”
Since writing that post, the federal government has announced $175 million in funding from their Housing Accelerator Fund. That will get us even closer to what is needed and if the provincial government chooses to provide a similar level of funding, we could be where we need to be when it comes to providing housing for those who need it the most.
I wish we could continue to fund the day shelter spaces while we await a clear provincial plan but with more shelter spaces than ever before, I believe the next steps need to be ensuring that all 1,800 shelter spaces operating in Edmonton are able to provide full services 24 hours a day. We will continue to advocate for that while also continuing to support in other ways. A great example of that was providing Boyle Street with access to a City-owned building on Stony Plain Road that has been serving as a warming centre for a number of months.
Mayor Sohi has already written to Minister Jason Nixon to take over the funding of these day shelter spaces and considering it is provincial jurisdiction, I hope they provide that funding in the short term while we await their plan to ensure there are enough 24/7 supportive housing units and recovery beds for everyone in Alberta.
