Kudos to the City of Langley and CAO Francis Cheung for finding a potential solution to the homeless camp on the Nickomekl floodplain near 208 Street and Fraser Highway.
The deal, announced Monday, will create a temporary overnight relief shelter with 30 places at the Gateway of Hope shelter this winter.
For those who want it, there will be three meals a day, storage for one buggy, a flexible curfew and the availability to smoke when they want.
The deal will give the City the power to seek injunctions against campers in community parks in the future, because the creation of the shelter meets the legal test imposed by a recent court ruling that said homeless are allowed to camp in public spaces when there is no other place to go.
Now that they do have a place to go, the City has more options than simply insisting tents be taken down during the day.
While the news of a temporary solution will be welcomed, especially by the people who live near the camp, it is no substitute for a lasting solution.
A look at the U.S. may provide an idea of what that permanent fix could look like, and it seems almost idiotically simple.
Get them homes.
Moving the homeless into housing with few strings attached, sometimes referred to as the “housing first” approach, gets people off the streets and cuts costs for the communities that embrace it.
The new approach aims to get people off the streets first, then tackle problems of drugs addiction and mental illness afterwards.
The only rule in the U.S. model is a ban on criminal activity, like selling drugs.
In Utah, where housing-first has reduced homelessness to what one official called “functional zero,” it costs roughly $8,000 (U.S.) to move a chronically homeless person into permanent housing, compared to the $20,000 (U.S.) that a year of temporary shelter costs.
There are also savings on police and medical costs.
By one estimate, the housing-first approach in the States has reduced the number of chronically homeless by about a third since 2008.
It is something the provincial government might consider at a time when a small community like Langley City is spending around a quarter million on homeless-related costs in less than a year.