As most Members may be aware, once the move goes into Housing First, then we are at risk of actually jeopardizing the emergency shelters. Emergency shelters will always be a necessity within the homeless population, especially in the North because we have such a transient population, so if I was to go out and put every single person into a house today, by tomorrow, perhaps even this evening, we would have more people.

My obligation is as we move forward in the Housing First model, we need to make sure that our emergency shelters are sustainable, and through that, if they are only based on the amount that they are given now per bed night, then that is not a sustainable model. The second part of his question, will these be extra funding to the emergency shelters? The money will not go into the emergency shelter component. We are looking at totally different spaces for the shelters, and similar, I will again now use the agency that has showed the success within our community. The YWCA does have a family violence shelter, and separate from that, they have the Rockhill apartments, which is again a successful model of housing families. We are looking at a similar model to house men and females so that these shelters are sustainable and that Housing First is actually a model we are using, so totally separate from the emergency shelter, but within the same facilities that provide those services. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.