Fredericton Council comes through for homeless, but would bolder have been better?
As the saying goes, it is never too late to do the right thing. That was going through my mind as I watched the special Fredericton City Council meeting Friday evening, and the decision to reverse their earlier vote, and provide the funding that will allow the John Howard Society to proceed with purchasing the City Motel to house the homeless.
The reversal came after the city scrambled in the midst of public pressure to make things right after voting down the funding earlier in the week. I understand it was Mayor O’Brien who came up with the idea of the city assuming some equity in the building and property, as a way to get the request through council. So, kudos to him for that.
Those who changed their vote to approve the expenditure did so on the strength of the strings the mayor suggested be attached to the money. These conditions amounted to ensuring they get the money back if anything happens with the project down the road, such as John Howard selling the property.
That was enough for some councillors. For others the difference, maybe, was because they received details about the project. I say “maybe” because while project manager Jason LeJeune says they had the details before, some councillors say they didn’t. I expect the contradictory messages have more to do with degree than deception.
I don’t quite understand Councillor Kate Rogers saying this revised motion is mean-spirited. Unless there is some reason I’m not aware of, I don’t see the city’s conditions as unreasonable or anything that should give the John Howard Society pause.
So unless the organization has been able to scrounge up the extra $900 thousand it needs to finalize this deal elsewhere, I expect they will agree with the city’s conditions and we will be a giant step forward in helping our homeless.
Horray for that. But how’s this for a Tale of Two Cities. While our city council was meeting Friday evening to revisit that $900 thousand for homelessness relief here, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation was announcing $3.4 million for affordable housing in Moncton.
That money was from the federal government’s Rapid Housing Initiative. The Fredericton John Howard Society also applied to that program, but was not successful.
So why Moncton and not Fredericton? At least part of the answer is a difference in attitude.
I said in a blog last week, that Fredericton City Council has done more to tackle homelessness than any previous council. The Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness and actions that flowed from it are making a difference. And now we have this new decision on the $900 thousand.
But consider the consternation all last week by Fredericton Council over that money because “housing isn’t in our lane. it’s a provincial responsibility”, and compare that with the attitude by their counterparts in Moncton. Mayor Dawn Arnold says it wasn’t easy “We are stretched and this is out of our lane, but we so consistently heard that something had to happen, that we had to take leadership on this”.
Taking leadership. That meant doing what they had to do to find $6 Million in their budget to put into homelessness over the next three years. They found it, but they had a condition – the province had to match it. And it did.
It wasn’t about letting the province off the hook. It was about getting creative and co-operating.
For Moncton, it was a bold step. And it worked. In fact it worked better than expected, because if they hadn’t done what they did, they probably would not be getting the $3.4 million federal grant. Applicants were graded on a scale that awarded points if the project had funding committed by other levels of government. So here’s Moncton, which came up with $6 million on the condition the province match it, so that’s $12 million, and now $3.4 million more because of the twelve, because they showed they had skin in the game. That’s more than $15 Million toward housing Moncton’s most vulnerable.
OK. Great for Moncton but not every municipality has the ability to do what Moncton did, even if they agreed that dealing with the crisis is more important than jurisdiction. But here’s the thing. Municipal reform is on the table. The strongest message New Brunswick municipalities should agree on, and deliver with unified voice, is something like this - We have a crisis with homelessness. Housing is a provincial responsibility, but successive governments have failed to deal with it. So we have to, so give us the resources through tax reform.
That battle will come soon. But meantime, raise a glass to both Fredericton and Moncton city councils. The future for vulnerable people in both cities is a little brighter today, because of their actions.
