Yellowknife city councillors agreed on how to distribute $1.2 million in federal homelessness funding at a meeting March 2.
Most of the money will go to Housing First: $175,000 for youth, $350,000 for families and $336,953 for individual adults. More money, $73,000, was alotted to prevention and shelter diversion and another $99,000 for Indigenous case management; $168,317 will be used for administrative costs including the salaries of city positions connected to homelessness.
Shauna Morgan, city councillor and chairperson of CAB, thanked committee members at the Feb. 28 Governance and Priorities Committee meeting for the discussion on the allocation of funding and mentioned that more money to address homelessness is on the way.
“Not related to COVID, per se, we got some additional money last year, as well, related to COVID,” she said. “We don’t know how much or when exactly.”
As for the remaining $168,317 in funds, this will be allocated to the City for administrative costs, while also funding the Homelessness Resource Coordinator position and fifty percent of the Homelessness Specialist position.
Administrative costs include community efforts to initiate a coordinated access system, which is a requirement of Reaching Home Community Entities.
Reaching Home itself (fully titled Reaching Home – Canada’s Strategy to End Homelessness) is a federal program regarding the country’s overall strategy to support the under-housed.
As a Community Entity for this program, the City of Yellowknife holds a five-year funding agreement with Employment and Social Development Canada which began in 2019.