The Minister is committed to addressing homelessness. We have put forward our agreement to partner with the city of Yellowknife within their Housing First model of housing one person, hopefully within the next three years to get 20 people in.
However, coming from this community, I know that if we were to only sit back and support only one agency providing one model, it probably would not be the most efficient use of our funds. To house one person within the community would not make a significant dent, and the other model would provide for 30 people. I must say that the other model is following a Housing First model as well, because Housing First does not only belong to the city.; It belongs to whoever wants to use it. We won't be building… Even though the shelters will be using it, the location of the units will be separate.
There is already one agency within Yellowknife, actually, that does use the model that we are looking at, and that is the YWCA within their Rockhill. They have done this model for many years and they have shown it is successful, so if we have a model that is successful within our community, why would we not duplicate that so we can get more people into housing?