End Homelessness Winnipeg receives $27.3M in additional federal funding

Tessa Adamski · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 11, 2025 5:44 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

End Homelessness Winnipeg is getting an further $27.3 cardinal successful national backing to forestall and trim homelessness.

A assemblage advisory committee astatine End Homelessness will determine however the backing volition beryllium spent, CEO Jason Whitford said astatine a quality league connected Tuesday.

The wealth volition apt spell toward strengthening lodging archetypal programs, extending hours astatine shelters, and homelessness preventative measures for children aging retired of attraction and radical exiting the justness system, helium said.

"Housing is much than conscionable a extortion implicit someone's head. It is astir belonging, safety, healing and helping that idiosyncratic fulfil their purpose," Whitford said.

The funds travel done the nationalist homelessness strategy's designated communities and Indigenous homelessness streams, which provide funding to 64 municipality areas, 3 territorial capitals, 30 Indigenous communities and agrarian and distant communities crossed Canada. 

Tuesday's announcement brings the full for Winnipeg done these streams to $174.7 cardinal from 2019-20 to 2027-28.

Whitford said much than 75 per cent of radical experiencing homelessness successful Winnipeg are Indigenous, though Indigenous radical lone marque up 14 per cent of Winnipeg's full population.

"Addressing this disparity requires solutions that are Indigenous-led, culturally grounded and driven by the voices of those astir affected to make lasting change," helium said.

End Homelessness Winnipeg, which works to code systemic barriers contributing to homelessness successful the city, completed a point-in-time thoroughfare census number successful November past twelvemonth that volition beryllium released successful mid-April, Whitford said.

The preliminary results from the survey suggest determination has been an influx of radical exiting the justness strategy and child-welfare strategy who are released into shelters due to the fact that they person obscurity other to go, helium said.

Investing successful due and innovative lodging enactment reduces homelessness, restores dignity, strengthens assemblage and promotes reconciliation, helium said.

"Eliminating chronic homelessness takes a co-ordinated effort," Winnipeg South Centre MP Ben Carr said astatine the quality conference.

Living without capable lodging prevents radical from improving their lives, Carr said, and intergenerational trauma, intelligence wellness struggles, addictions and other socio-economic barriers lend to chronic homelessness.