Prince Albert point-in-time homeless tally expected to increase

Prince Albert's annual point-in-time homelessness count is set to take place on Wednesday. The pit count helps agencies plan for future services. For those living on the street, they say they can't afford housing and services are lacking. When you go to a homeless shelter, 80% of the time you can't get in. There's no place that can roof all of us out here. There's 200 to 400 people out here on the street, and there's, what, only 30 beds? That's ridiculous. Last year's count found 279 people were living on the street. Housing is in a fluid state. Organizers estimate this year's numbers will be even higher. For the first time, the pit count will include people living in homeless encampments. Volunteers will not enter encampments to collect the data. Instead, trained staff from the city's by-law department, Mobile Crisis, and the Métis Women's Organization will conduct the count. I think reflected in our enumeration, as we'll see a little bit of our numbers, go up just based on the fact that we're kind of getting into a territory where we've been unable to capture in years past. There's roughly 100 emergency shelter beds in Prince Albert with about 20 more beds for those fleeing domestic violence. The city has done a housing needs assessment and is working with federal and provincial programs to create more affordable housing. We're looking to kind of bring in an incentive package to get more transitional and affordable housing built so that it takes pressure off our shelters. It gives people a place to flow to once they've been in the shelter system. In the meantime, the city is working with the province to build a new 45-bed emergency shelter. Construction is expected to begin early next year. Lisa Ruzum, CBC News, Prince Albert.