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Donald Smith has slept in homeless shelters and roughed it on the streets of Vancouver, Halifax, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge and Calgary.

But his time in Medicine Hat was different.

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After landing in the southern Alberta city late last year and spending a sleepless night at the Salvation Army shelter, Smith says he followed the advice of someone he met on the streets and made an appointment with a housing worker.

A few weeks later, Smith, who has experienced homelessness on and off for three years, says he wasn’t sleeping in a shelter. The 35-year-old cried after he was given the keys to his own sunny one-bedroom apartment in January 2015.

“I was shocked how they got me a place fast,” he says.

In 2009, Medicine Hat launched an ambitious five-year plan to eliminate homelessness based on the “housing first” principle.