The race to eradicate poverty has moved to the forefront of issues confronting Albertas cities, large and small. The provincial capital has End Poverty Edmonton, a 10-year plan to address the more than 100,000 people living in poverty. In Calgary, Enough For All: The Calgary Poverty Reduction Initiative is working to help the more than 114,000 people who live below the poverty line.
Now, Medicine Hat has joined the fight. On Wednesday, its Poverty Reduction Leadership Group unveiled Thrive, its own proposal to assist the one in 10 residents dealing with poverty defined as someone who earns less than what they need to meet the necessities of life.
But what makes Medicine Hat so uniquely qualified to end poverty is its reputation as a place where things get done.
Two years ago, it became the first Canadian city to solve homelessness. It succeeded by taking 1,072 people, including 312 children, off the streets and providing them with a place to live, be it a house, an apartment, basement suite, trailer, townhouse or condo. The rent was set at 30 per cent of a persons income, and pride of ownership has helped keep homelessness from making a significant comeback.
Medicine Hat has been so vigilant at monitoring homelessness, it has attracted the interest of city officials from Victoria, B.C. to St. Johns, Nfld., to Texas, Washington State and the United Kingdom. The program was so successful it became the springboard for ridding an even bigger problem.
When we announced a functional end to homelessness, the next step was logically poverty reduction, said Medicine Hat Councillor Celina Symmonds, who was involved in the homelessness project as a member of the Community Housing Society. It is a very co-ordinated effort [taking on poverty], but this community does pull together. I like to call it the little community that can.
Emanuel Akech, 44, can attest to that. He arrived alone in Medicine Hat in 2008, after leaving his war-torn homeland of Sudan and spending 14 years in Cuba, before eventually becoming a Canadian citizen. When he reached Medicine Hat, he had only a backpack with him.
Community Housing put him in a place for the night, got him into the Canadian Mental Health Associations Housing First program, which ultimately placed him in a fourplex. He pays his rent from the income support he receives from the federal government. He is aware of how fortunate he is.
I see some suffering the same way. Ive been there, he said of his early days in Alberta. To not suffer like that, I like that way.
Medicine Hats approach is to streamline a one-stop system where all services and social needs can be met. Assistance will come from a myriad of sources including the city, Medicine Hat College, the school board and the food bank, all of them committed to making things work and work well.
Theyre all on the inside and theyre pushing the agenda through their different networks, said Jaime Rogers, manager of the Homeless and Housing Development Department. Thats why this is working, because you have all these background players who have connections and legitimacy in the community.
Measuring poverty in Canada is not an exact exercise. The federal government has defined the low-income measuring point as having half the median income of an equivalent household. In Statistics Canadas most recent survey, nearly five million Canadians were considered impoverished.
End Poverty Edmonton was unveiled in September of 2015 as united task force involving the city, the provinces Poverty Reduction Strategy and the United Ways Capital Region. Its members are business people, academia and health-care and social-service workers. Their research told them one in eight Edmontonians earn less than $16,968 per year.
In Calgary, the Poverty Reduction Initiative first surveyed the public to understand what poverty meant and how it impacted people. Enough For All is a collaborative effort between the city and the United Way of Calgary designed to assist the one in 10 Calgarians living below the poverty line. The goal is to be poverty free in a generation.
I think its a worthy initiative, said John Kolkman, research and policy analysis co-ordinator for the Edmonton Social Planning Council. Is it overly ambitious? Some have argued that theres so much attention on the overarching developments that we miss what it really is a series of small steps.
Mr. Kolkman pointed to Medicine Hat as proof that social ills can be cured.
Medicine Hat has largely eliminated chronic homelessness thats when people cant hold a place to stay no matter what is done. Medicine Hat has the gold standard for eliminating that, he said. Ive been to Medicine Hat and Ive been impressed with how cohesive it is there between the city, the non-profit organizations, businesses, the labour unions. Its helped by having the population it has [being the right size to see positive results].
Medicine Hats approach to poverty has 17 milestones to gauge how its performing. Yearly suicide rates will be monitored. So will the waiting lists for social housing. It will be, its administrators believe, very much a made-in-Medicine-Hat success story.
I think communities now are starting to take a look at themselves and saying, What can we do to be part of the solution? Ms. Symmonds said. Yes, provincial and federal governments are going to have to be a part of this. There has to be changes in systems across the board. That said, we have a lot to offer here.
A House of Commons committee on human resources, skills and social development will be in Medicine Hat Thursday for a public hearing. The committee is gathering information on how to reduce poverty.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Medicine Hat homeless persons were granted new purpose-built housing. In fact, they were granted housing in existing homes, apartments and townhouses.
Follow Allan Maki on Twitter: @AllanMaki
Read more:
Medicine Hat unveils proposal to assist residents dealing with poverty - The Globe and Mail
- Yes, But. The Annotated Atlantic. - November 7th, 2009 [November 7th, 2009]
- Health Insurance Benefit Costs by Region - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- For an Operator, Please Press... - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pollyanna With a Pen: Maine Governor Signs 18 New Health Care Bills into Law - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- AMA Sounds the Alarm, Medicare Making Yet Another Attempt to Cut Reimbursement - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mass Governor Asks Blue Cross to Keep Higher Employer Contribution - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Lifespan and Care New England Plan Monopoly (Again) - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dirigo Health: Con Artists, Liars, and Thieves? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Orleans: Health Challenges - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- August a Flurry of Activity - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Maine's Dirigo Health Savings One-Third of Original Estimate - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- “Methodolatry”: My new favorite term for one of the shortcomings of evidence-based medicine - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Suzanne Somers’ Knockout: Dangerous misinformation about cancer (part 1) - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A science-based blog about GMO - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A Not-So-Split Decision - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Military Medicine in Iraq - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The effective wordsmithing of Amy Wallace - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A Science Lesson from a Homeopath and Behavioral Optometrist - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Join CFI in opposing funding mandates for quackery in health care reform - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mainstreaming Science-Based Medicine: A Novel Approach - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Those who live in glass houses… - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- J.B. Handley of the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue: Misogynistic attacks on journalists who champion science - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- When homeopaths attack medicine and physics - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The cancer screening kerfuffle erupts again: “Rethinking” screening for breast and prostate cancer - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- All Medicines Are Poison! - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- When Loud Wins: Will Your Tax Dollars Pay For Prayer? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- It’s All in Your Head - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Skeptical O.B. joins the Science-Based Medicine crew - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Tragic Death Toll of Homebirth - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s the right C-section rate? Higher than you think. - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Recombinant Human Antithrombin – Milking Nanny Goats for Big Bucks - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Does C-section increase the rate of neonatal death? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Man in Coma 23 Years – Is He Really Conscious? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Why Universal Hepatitis B Vaccination Isn’t Quite Universal - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Ontario naturopathic prescribing proposal is bad medicine - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Naturopaths and the anti-vaccine movement: Hijacking the law in service of pseudoscience - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Institute for Science in Medicine enters the health care reform fray - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Neti pots – Ancient Ayurvedic Treatment Validated by Scientific Evidence - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Early Intervention for Autism - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- A temporary reprieve from legislative madness - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- A critique of the leading study of American homebirth - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Lose those holiday pounds - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Endocrine disruptors—the one true cause? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Acupuncture for Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Evidence in Medicine: Experimental Studies - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Midwives and the assault on scientific evidence - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Mammogram Post-Mortem - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- An Influenza Recap: The End of the Second Wave - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The End of Chiropractic - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer! (revisited) - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Another wrinkle to the USPSTF mammogram guidelines kerfuffle: What about African-American women? - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Acupuncture, the P-Value Fallacy, and Honesty - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- The One True Cause of All Disease - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Communicating with the Locked-In - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Are the benefits of breastfeeding oversold? - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Measles - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Radiation from medical imaging and cancer risk - December 21st, 2009 [December 21st, 2009]
- Multiple Sclerosis and Irrational Exuberance - December 21st, 2009 [December 21st, 2009]
- Medical Fun with Christmas Carols - December 22nd, 2009 [December 22nd, 2009]
- Lithium for ALS – Angioplasty for MS - December 23rd, 2009 [December 23rd, 2009]
- “Toxins”: the new evil humours - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- 2009’s Top 5 Threats To Science In Medicine - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Buteyko Breathing Technique – Nothing to Hyperventilate About - December 26th, 2009 [December 26th, 2009]
- The Graston Technique – Inducing Microtrauma with Instruments - December 29th, 2009 [December 29th, 2009]
- The “pharma shill” gambit - December 29th, 2009 [December 29th, 2009]
- Ginkgo biloba – No Effect - December 30th, 2009 [December 30th, 2009]
- Oppose “Big Floss”; practice alternative dentistry - January 1st, 2010 [January 1st, 2010]
- Causation and Hill’s Criteria - January 3rd, 2010 [January 3rd, 2010]
- The life cycle of translational research - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Dr. Paul Offit - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- Osteoporosis Drugs: Good Medicine or Big Pharma Scam? - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- Acupuncture for Hot Flashes - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The case for neonatal circumcision - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- A victory for science-based medicine - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- James Ray and testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The Water Cure: Another Example of Self Deception and the “Lone Genius” - January 12th, 2010 [January 12th, 2010]
- Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Dossey, you just might get it - January 13th, 2010 [January 13th, 2010]
- You. You. Who are you calling a You You? - January 15th, 2010 [January 15th, 2010]
- The War on Salt - January 16th, 2010 [January 16th, 2010]
- Is breech vaginal delivery safe? - January 16th, 2010 [January 16th, 2010]