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Bad news comes to Edmonton, courtesy of the CBC: the local homeless shelters are full to bursting. In an item about an annual roast beef dinner for the indigent, we learn from an official of Boyle Street Community Services, which you may think of as “Ground Zero” if you are not from around here, that the BSCS shelter has been “packed” all winter despite warm weather. (Edmonton had no February in 2016. We got a double helping of March.)

In nine months the number of people receiving mail at the centre has increased by about 60 per cent. Staff report a 42 per cent increase in outdoor sleeping. Low oil prices are biting hard. Donations are flagging.

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The CBC mentions, in passing, that Edmonton, like many other Alberta cities, is in the eighth year of a 10-year plan to “end homelessness.” Just days after that plan was announced, back in 2009, the Alberta government announced that it also had a plan to “eradicate homelessness” in 10 years. The province formed an Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness, an Alberta Interagency Council on Homelessness, and an Alberta Homelessness Research Consortium. The Council formed six working committees, all with ambitious chairpersons. They generated a snazzy report in 2014 announcing that 9,451 homeless Albertans had passed through “housing first” programs at a total cost — to the provincial government alone — of close to $600 million.