In 2009, Medicine Hat became one of the first Canadian cities to commit to ending homelessness using the housing first approach. In the Starting at Home in Medicine Hat: Our 5 Year Plan to End Homelessness (2010-2015), the community laid out its vision, key principles, and core strategies to realize this vision.

Four years later, considerable progress has been made as indicated by reductions in shelter use, the number of homeless housed and maintaining housing, as well as a number of measures introduced to restructure the Homeless-Serving System in Medicine Hat.

The learnings gained through implementation along with the emerging trends brought by a constantly shifting environment present both opportunities and challenges to realize the ambitious vision laid out in the initial Plan.

The implementation of Efforts to Outcomes (ETO), Centralized Housing Assessment and Triage, and the roll-out of a number of housing first programs have resulted in 703 people being housed from April 1, 2009 to September 17, 2013, including 243 children. Of those housed, 28% were chronically homeless and 72% were episodically homeless.

There were 16 units of new affordable housing built since 2009, bringing Medicine Hat’s total to 529. In 2012-13, MCHCS reported 849 unique individuals moved through the local emergency shelter system, compared to 1,147 in 2008-09; this represents a 298 (26%) decrease. Despite encouraging, these statistics suggest that considerable challenges must still be overcome in order to realize an end to homelessness.