CALGARY—The province has cut funding to the Calgary Homeless Foundation, which will mean reductions to housing, mental health and addictions outreach programs around the city.

According to a document obtained by Star Calgary, the province will cut funding to the CHF by nearly eight per cent, or roughly $3.2 million, this year. This decision was made as part of the interim supply budget the UCP government is providing before they pass the provincial budget later this year.

A few organizations funded by CHF will bear the brunt of these cuts, including the longtime addictions outreach centre, Alpha House. The CHF is the primary funder for Alpha House’s Downtown Outreach Addictions Partnership (DOAP) Team, who pick up vulnerable people and drive them to medical appointments, shelters and addictions programs around the city.

Kathy Christiansen, executive director of Alpha House, said they hope to be able to make up the funding shortfall this year internally so services aren’t affected. But the issue they face is finding a way to make up this loss in funding in next year’s budget. The cut is significant enough to mean Alpha House could lose several of their DOAP teams next year, including the primary team created in 2005, that made 20,000 transports around Calgary last year.

“When we started the program back in 2005, the goal was to create an alternative and more appropriate response to public intoxication and street level issues than police, EMS and the local hospitals when that type of intervention wasn’t required,” Christiansen said, adding she’s worried about who will make up for the gap left by losing transport service provided by the DOAP Team. She also said the economic savings the city gains from Alpha House taking on this work would also be lost, and more strain would be put on emergency services.

Christiansen noted their needle debris team and the DOAP teams specifically working in the Beltline and with Calgary transit receive their funding from other sources and wouldn’t be affected.

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Despite this funding cut, Alberta’s Minister of Community and Social Services Rajan Sawhney said the government will still continue to work with the CHF and other partners in the community to support services helping vulnerable populations.

“Our government is committed to protecting vulnerable Albertans, while at the same time getting the province’s finances back on track in order to sustain our vital programs for future generations,” Sawhney said in a written statement on Thursday.

The CHF stewards funding from the government to groups like Alpha House and Diana Krecsy, the foundation’s CEO, said they tried to apply the cuts in such a way that it wouldn’t return any of their clients to homelessness.

She said she’s optimistic this initial reduction isn’t a sign of future cuts, and hopes funding will be restored by the province going forward. But she added it’s important for public services to ensure these cuts don’t further hurt vulnerable people, arguing that Calgary still needs more affordable housing units.

“All of us as Albertans are working together to say ‘OK, everybody tighten your belts,’ and certainly we’ve done that in a system of care and we’ve done that with the agencies. Now, this is as tight as we can go,” Krecsy said.

Other affected organizations include the Children’s Cottage, which provides supports preventing harm to youths; Aspen, which finds stable housing for clients; and the children’s mental health centre Wood’s Homes.

The CHF made cuts to organizations working in primary prevention, which works to reduce homelessness by intervening in the structural factors that contribute to the issue. Though they agree primary prevention is the best way to work against homelessness, they made the cuts there because they argue that governments should take a more active role in funding this work, instead of relying on not-for-profits.

Krecsy specifically pointed to Alpha House’s DOAP Team as a group that’s proven their value to the City of Calgary, works directly with police, emergency medical services and hospitals, and should receive more funding from the city.

“There’s a big portion of the work that that particular program does that actually is really core infrastructure for the City of Calgary,” Krecsy said.

“We’re asking the other public systems now to start equalizing and owning up to what’s become dependency on not-for-profits to do core infrastructure that’s the responsibility of public systems or the municipality. And that’s one program that absolutely needs to do that.”

The CHF will continue to fund aspects of Alpha House directly related to their mandate of prioritizing housing supports, such as the DOAP encampment team, which connects with people sleeping in rough conditions and offers to help them find housing.

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Christiansen said Alpha House will advocate to all three levels of government to provide funding support this fall and on a more long-term basis beginning next year.

“We work in a continuum of care here at the Center, where we have street outreach, we have a shelter, we have a detox program, and then half of what we do is housing in the community,” Christiansen said, adding that continuum is very effective, and the funding cuts mean connections between the DOAP team and their other programs are lost.

Krecsy said the CHF prepared a prudent budget in the spring anticipating an uncertain year ahead with a provincial election being called before a budget was passed in the spring. This allowed the CHF to cover the majority of the province’s cuts by reworking their finances internally, but still left roughly $1 million in reductions to spread between the four agencies.

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