In the face of a burgeoning homelessness crisis in Regina, the Namerind Housing Corporation has released its solution in the form of an updated five-year plan. Published Tuesday, the plan includes “four foundations” which cover leadership and implementation, coordinated access, housing and supports, as well as prevention and diversion. Namerind President and CEO Robert Byers said meetings are planned with both municipal and provincial levels of government. “We are going to start getting together and working together to solve this. Like I’ve said in the plan and like it says in the plan, this is a community that has to make our community better,” he explained. “It’s going to take all of us. It’s important that we get started as soon as we can.” Despite it being a proposed plan, Byers said quite a bit of work went into creating it. “It is a lot of work but we wanted to make sure that we got it right, because this is also a plan in how we want to spend the Government of Canada money and how we can make that money work best for us here in Regina,” he said. According to the report, Regina’s homeless population has increased 255 per cent since 2015 – rising from approximately 200 to more than 800 people. Eighty per cent of the city’s homeless population identified themselves as Indigenous – despite making up just 11 per cent of Regina’s overall population. “The fact of the matter is this is our government, this government has a plan to address homelessness, not only in Regina but across the province. That’s a $40.2 million two-year plan, provincial approach to homelessness,” Minister of Social Services Terry Jenson said. Over the course of 2024, an estimated 263,000 people across Canada experienced homelessness – this equates to one in every 200 Canadians.
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