Native Council of P.E.I. hopes to provide 'cultural health' through transitional housing project

The Native Council of P.E.I. is planning to build20 units of transitional housingfor peoplestruggling with homelessness.

The council has studied the housing needs in itscommunity, said Scott Carnall, housingdevelopment officer for the council.

"We have so many members that struggle to get into housing in Charlottetown and across the Island," Carnall said.

"I think we have currently over 30 people there in homeless situations, and so they're living in different supportive housing across the Island, living on someone's couch."

The project will also include cultural programming and healing for those in need.

"We want to make sure that the members that are coming into [this]housing, they're getting cultural health and healing and teachings, and also look atcreating confidence in these members," he said.

"We just want to make sure that we're wrapping them in support and giving them cultural healing and then moving on from there."

Help with healing

Lisa Cooper, the council's president and chief, said it's important that this facility be run by the Native Council of P.E.I.

"When it's done by your own community, then you feel safer," she said. "That's what it's about, is having cultural access to programs and services."

What I would have liked to have seen is the $3 million that it'sgoing to take to build our centre. Lisa Cooper, Native Council of P.E.I.

Cooper said the new facility will play an important role for the Indigenous community on P.E.I.

"We have intergenerational trauma and we have mental health and addictions," she said."We're not going to heal unless we have people there to help us through the process."

The council received $50,000 for the projectfrom the Community Housing Fund, a partnership between the P.E.I. government and the Canadian Mental Health Association.

That money will be used to start the planning phase of the work. The council is currently looking at hiring an architectwith an Indigenous background to help with the design.

While Cooper saidany money is helpful, she hopes more government funding will be available to help cover the estimated $3 million cost of the project.

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