Councillor wants more temporary housing options for city's homeless

With a rising number of homeless people camping in the River Valley and development of more supportive housing units still years away, a city councillor wantsto examine temporary, alternative options.

• Complaints about homeless camps in Edmonton on pace to double

Coun. Scott McKeenhas asked city staff for a report on why more people aren't using existing shelters, and to consider ways to create"temporary, quickly implementable" options for additional shelter.

"[People] are leading desperate lives out there, and we continue to pay a high price for chasing our tail on this, whether it's policing, bylaw, the folks who clean up these camps, (or) the business zones," McKeen said Tuesday during a city council meeting.

"We have established permanent supportive housing as a high priority but that's ... going to take a while. So to get a report back on some options we might be able to use in the interim to reduce conflicts and to get more of these people in from the cold and into services, I hope everyone can support this."

As of October, the city had received 1,400 complaints this year about people camping on parkland; if the numberscontinue at the same pace, there will be roughly 1,800 complaints by year's end.

The city has ashortageof permanent supportive housing, which offers more intense, on-site support for tenants. Such housing is considered a key component in any plan to end homelessness, but is both expensive to build and difficult to plan.

Citystaffare expected to come back with four recommended sites for such housing by early next year.

The report McKeenrequested is due back in March.

Homeward Trust, a non-profit organization that contracts and co-ordinates housing programs in Edmonton, is scheduled to release an annual report on its housing efforts on Wednesday afternoon.