Why hasn't Winnipeg replicated the 'Houston model'?

In 2011, Houston had one of the largest homeless populations in America, with about 8,500 people living on the streets. Since then, the city has managed to house more than 30,000 people experiencing homelessness with its Way Home strategy, reducing the number of people without housing in the city by 62 per cent in just over a decade.

Houston did it by following a "housing first" principle: The government pays for housing, and then, through a network of organizations, connects people who are homeless with various services to address their specific needs.

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham took a trip to Houston last September to see the model at work. 

Gillingham said what draws him to it is that all organizations work under one plan, with a network of members using a data-sharing system that gives them access to a centralized list of clients waiting for a place to live.

They have one co-ordinated plan in Houston," which is essential "if we're going to be successful in helping people come off the street and get into housing with the supports that are needed, the mayor said.

With Premier Wab Kinew and his government also looking at the Houston model, "I think we have an opportunity right now to bring everybody together to establish one plan with the 'housing first' approach," Gillingham told Radio-Canada.

Kinews NDP promised during last year's election campaign to end chronic homelessness in Winnipeg within two terms by following the Houston model.

The 2024 provincial budget restates that goal, promising a modest $5 million for support toward a housing first model and other initiatives addressing chronic homelessness.

Bernadette Smith, the province's minister of housing, addictions and homelessness, said that money will be given to multiple organizations throughout the year for different initiatives.

Winnipegs 2024 budget, meanwhile, calls for an aggressive transition towards the housing first model.

But Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud says that model is already a reality in the city.

"We have 'housing first.' We don't have the housing, said Blaikie Whitecloud, the CEO of Siloam Mission, which manages a shelter downtown.

Housing is the real answer and the real solution to homelessness, and 'housing first' is how we get people into the housing and support them to thrive there.

Siloam Mission is increasingly investing in housing programs, including a commitment to building 700 new housing units in the next 10 years.

Blaikie Whitecloud said housing supply is the biggest obstacle to a citywide housing first approach in Winnipeg particularly the lack of social housing.

Winnipeg has far fewer social housing units than other Prairie cities, she said.

"Calgary has nine social housing units for every 20 low-income people, Regina has eight. In Winnipeg we have three. So it's literally that the doors arent there," she said.

Jamil Mahmood, the CEO of Main Street Project, also says Winnipegs apartment vacancy rate is too low 1.8 per cent, according to the most recent Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data.

For comparison, when Houston launched its strategy in 2011, rental vacancy rates in that city were much higher than the U.S.s national average: 13.1 per cent vs. 7.4 per cent.

"You can bring in models that rely on 'housing first,' but without the housing stock, we're not going to be able to implement them fully, Mahmood said. 

Main Street Project runs two housing programs. One oversees 36 transitional housing units, the other 42 permanent units. The organization also follows a housing first approach.

But if Winnipeg organizations are already using a similar model to Houstons, why hasnt it obtained the same results?

I would say [our approach] is working. We're just not doing on a scale we need to actually make an indent into the challenge we're facing, Mahmood said.

In 2022, 1,256 people were experiencing homelessness in Winnipeg, according to the latest Street Census, which is done during a single night in the city.

Thats fewer people than the previous census from 2018, which found almost 1,500 people experiencing homelessness, though End Homelessness Winnipeg says the data from those reports isnt comparable because of changes in the methodology.

Winnipeg's latest street census which provides a snapshot based on a 24-hour period counted over 1,200 people in the city without homes in 2022, but researchers say that number doesn't reflect the true size of the problem.  

Mahmood said about 3,500 housing units would be needed to address homelessness in the city. Unfortunately, he said, governments have tended to support the construction of market price units rather than investing in social housing.

In Houston, almost all of the apartments used to house the citys former homeless population were in the private market. Many housing complexes expressly targeting unhoused people were also built by the private sector.

The absence of zoning laws in Houston makes it easier to get housing built there fast.

Manitoba's latest budget calls for $116 million in spending to build and maintain social housing. The funding is intended to build 350 units and renovate more than 3,000 others.

While Winnipegs mayor recognizes "the great work" of social service organizations in the city, he underscores theres still a lack of co-ordination between them.

"A lot of them are co-ordinating, but not all and I include ourselves as governments," he said.

"Some organizations say, Look, we're doing the Houston model.' With all due respect, no, we're not doing the Houston model in this town."

Gillingham said the city needs to contextualize Houston's approach to Winnipeg's own circumstances, but still accept the same principle of a single, co-ordinated housing first plan with social supports.

One of the things he likes about Houstons model, he said, is that citys willingness to be firm.

If an organization doesn't want to be part of their co-ordinated plan then you have to find your own funding elsewhere. It sounds harsh, but I think the funding needs to be tied to organizations adopting and buying into one co-ordinated plan, Gillingham said. 

"A business doesn't have three business plans. A successful team of any sport doesn't have two or three game plans."

But Mahmood denies there's a lack of co-ordination among Winnipegs community organizations.

"I think we've done a pretty good job to not compete with each other," he said.

"We do all technically compete because there's a limited pot of funding. But we're all communicating all the time on what our needs are and who's doing what."

Gillingham acknowledged any plan needs to be made in partnership with the agencies who are on the front lines in fighting homelessness.

"We have to be willing to adjust and build a model that is not about any entity, not about any department, not about any government," he said. 

"It can't be business as usual. It's got to be disruptive somewhat."

The mayor said he wants to make serious progress on this file in the next six to 12 months, before the next city budget.

Betty Edel, senior director of housing supports for End Homelessness Winnipeg, said shes open to a new way of doing things.

If we can get everyone to the table at the same time, it becomes not a government-owned program, but it becomes a government/community-owned program that everyone sees themselves in it, she said. 

"If Houston can bring all three levels of government together with the community, and we can secure solid funding and we know it's going to be there for years and years, then I think that's a very good model."

End Homelessness Winnipeg is the organization in charge of implementing the federal government's Reaching Home strategy which targets homelessness in the city.

While Edel believes a housing first approach isnt well suited for every city in the world, she sees increasing willingness from all levels of government to address the issue.

"This is the strongest I've ever seen that [co-operation] happening, she said.

In 2019, the federal Infrastructure Department got rid of a requirement for cities to spend 65 per cent of their federal funding on housing first programs, which was then part of the federal governments homelessness strategy.

A spokesperson for the department said community stakeholders indicated during consultations in 2017 that the requirement prevented communities from investing based on their local priorities.

Housing first is still an important part of the federal government's homelessness strategy, the spokesperson said, and communities throughout the country have continued to prioritize the approach.

But Siloam's Blaikie Whitecloud said to reform how homelessness is addressed, governments should also take a broader view.

People just out of prison or hospitals, or people who "age out" of family services care, often end up in the streets, she said. 

Edel shares that sentiment.

"If you want to end homelessness, we need to get upstream. We need to start preventing it," she said. 

"If we don't recognize the role of the correction system, the role of the child welfare system, the role of the health-care system [in homelessness] we will never end it."

Winnipeg doesn't have a centralized waitlist for people who are experiencing homelessness. The closest thing to it is the citys co-ordinated access system named "Naatamooskakowin" which End Homelessness Winnipeg launched in 2022.

The system aims to provide a more effective way to connect with the citys homeless population in which Indigenous people are significantly overrepresented and to allow organizations to quickly find people homes or any other supports they may need.

But "we're also not putting everybody into co-ordinated access because we know there's not the housing available on the other end," said Main Street Project's Mahmood. 

His organization only enters people who are best suited for housing programs into the access system, because it knows there isnt enough room, Mahmood said.

Community organizations also use the federal Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS), a database that helps service providers keep track of their clients, though Mahmood said its limited.

"I don't think it works great for our needs. It's more of a record of what happened," he said. We'd love to see more work around a shared data system that allows us to communicate real-time whats happening."

Mahmood said currently, service providers in the city use an instant messaging platform to communicate with each other.

"We are working well together," he said. "I think the gap is in that kind of data and technology communication piece that we're kind of a little far behind on."

Blaikie Whitecloud said Siloam Mission and Main Street Project are working on an app that would be better suited to their needs.

The app would let them quickly access client profiles, showing service providers any important information they should pass along to them.

"We could say, 'Oh hey, you have a housing viewing tomorrow too, don't forget.' And then the day after, 'How did your housing viewing go?'" she said.

Blaikie Whitecloud said such a system would avoid doubling up services.

Edel said that any data-sharing scheme must involve the rest of the province, as many homeless people in Winnipeg come from other communities.

Blaikie Whitecloud said that Siloam Mission and Main Street Project are working on an app that would be better suited to their needs.

The app would let them quickly access client profiles, showing service providers if there is any important information they should pass along to them.

We could say, Oh hey, you have a housing viewing tomorrow too, don't forget. And then the day after, How did your housing viewing go? she said.

Blaikie Whitecloud said such system would avoid doubling up services.

Edel said that any data-sharing scheme must involve the rest of the province, as many homeless people in Winnipeg come from other communities.

Between 2009 and 2013, Winnipeg was one of five Canadian cities along with Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Moncton, N.B. that participated in a study looking into the effectiveness of housing first.

The At Home/Chez Soi project got $110 million in funding from the federal government. In Winnipeg, it specifically looked into homelessness among Indigenous people suffering from mental illness.

The researchers followed 513 participants over two years, comparing housing first-style interventions with pre-existing services.

It was a great success. In the housing first group, 45 per cent of participants had access to housing at all times throughout the last six months of the project. Only 29 per cent of people in the "treatment as usual" group did.

In the housing first group, only 18 per cent of participants didnt get access to any kind of housing during the study period, compared to 52 per cent in the other group.

"This finding is particularly noteworthy given the extremely low vacancy rate for rental housing in Winnipeg," says the projects final report. As Houston would eventually find, the At Home/Chez Soi project found housing first was also cost effective.

Edel, who was one of the people behind the study, said that a big reason for its success was the involvement of Indigenous groups.

"We were very clear that this would be done from an Indigenous perspective," Edel said.

"We listened to the people who would be impacted by our behaviours and whatever was planned. We asked them, 'What do you need done?'"

Those conversations resulted in three programs that factored in the trauma caused by colonization and in particular, the residential school system.

The programs built upon the knowledge of elders who helped create them, and initiatives that allowed clients to rebuild their connections to their own communities.

Theyre still offered at the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre and the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre of Winnipeg.

"There was always that understanding that it wasn't just about the individual. It was about the ripple effect and it's about people losing who they are, and it was about the history of trauma through generations," Edel said.

"I think it was us being mindful of that and acknowledging that, and working from that basis that helped us be different, and that's why those programs are still here today."

Sam Tsemberis, a clinical psychologist who is credited with creating the North American housing first model in New York in the early 1990s, visited Winnipeg for the At Home/Chez Soi project. 

Tsemberis is originally from Montreal, but had already been living in the U.S. for a while when he participated in the project. 

Tsemberis recalls feeling some culture shock when, as a person coming from the U.S., he found himself across the table from Indigenous leaders who asked him why hed come to their city to tell them how their people ought to live.

That dynamic brought to light one of the fundamental elements of the housing first approach, he said.

"This program we're talking about is all about client choice," he said. "We follow peoples leads. Most people who are homeless want housing first."

Tsemberis said because there is a solid base for a housing first model in Winnipeg, hes optimistic it could continue to expand here.

If there's some organization or two organizations that could take the lead and expand their existing housing first program if we all get on the same page, all of that can be accomplished in months," he said.

Translation and layout by Arturo Chang