National conference in Winnipeg explores ways to combat homelessness

The room is packed with people talking about homelessness, sharing best practices, and working on solutions. Sam Watts with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness says 40 years ago, the homeless population was mostly men struggling with alcohol addiction. If we look at it today, it's across an age range that is rather significant. It is both male and female. There's an indigenous component to it as well. And also it combines challenges of addiction with mental health issues. That's part of the discussion at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness. Kevin Webb is from the Calgary Drop-In Centre. He shared strategies that work for them. We looked at what could we do to remove barriers that were keeping people in encampments. So by removing those barriers around things like storage and couples and really creating a housing-focused movement, we were able to take people that we hadn't seen in a long time in shelter. Webb says in 2017, the Calgary Drop-In Centre became a housing-focused emergency shelter. He thinks others should do the same. More shelters across Canada. Adopting the housing-focused shelter model, we'll see a reduction in people experiencing homelessness. The Main Street Project in Winnipeg says access to housing is a common problem among all organizations. We're all in the same boat of how do we build housing, how do we triage in the short term and get to a point where we can keep people alive until the housing is ready for them and make sure people are safe in that time. Watts says in Canada, homelessness should be rare, brief and non-recurring. So if we can do something so that we begin to fulfill that brand promise of who we are as Canadians, I think all of this effort, all of this energy will be worthwhile. There are expected to be 2,000 people at the conference that runs until Thursday. Mike Arsenault, CBC News, Winnipeg.