[homeles_ot-l] Proposal to Council on housing and homelessness in city structure

[Lynne Browne]

Hello everyone,

 

You’ll recall that The Alliance to End Homelessness sent an Open Letter to
Council on May 1st.on housing and homelessness in the city’s organizational
structure. Since then we have been working on a good solution with city
politicians. As a result we have developed a concrete ‘proposal’ outlined in
the attached letter which was sent yesterday to all Council members and cc’d
to the City Manager and Deputy Managers. The issue will likely be on the
Community and Protective Services Agenda for June 1st. 

 

We are seeing positive indications and leadership from several Council
members on CPS and the Planning committee, but we will definitely need to
demonstrate broad support for the proposal. We encourage individual agencies
to attend and speak briefly to it on June 1st. So far, The Ottawa Social
Housing Network and the Housing Plus, the Supportive Housing Network of
Ottawa will be there. We’ll provide more details as the day approaches. In
the meanwhile, please let me know if your agency will be able to join us and
speak that day. 

 

Our plan is to release the Proposal to the media closer to June 1st. Before
that many of you may have an occasion to speak about it with individual
Councillors and you’ll find quite a few speaking points in the attached
Proposal to Ottawa Council – “Under one roof”, a city structure solution to
address the need for cohesive approach to affordable housing and
homelessness.

 

In the letter, we “propose that there be a General Manager of Housing in
Ottawa whose sole responsibility is to oversee affordable housing – this
includes homelessness services, emergency shelters and community services as
well as existing and new federally funded supportive and affordable housing
and existing social housing; and affordable housing planning. 

 

Building on current and historical practice and especially on its knowledge
and strengths in delivering the housing portfolio, it makes sense that
Community and Protective Services Committee (CPS) provide oversight and
function as the one point of contact, and that this position report directly
to the Deputy City Manager for City Operations. 

 

With a General Manager of Housing, Ottawa can ensure an organizational
structure with administrative leadership to focus on building capacity to
fulfill Council policies for affordable housing, for new and existing
supportive housing, and for the supports to help people access or to stay
housed. Ottawa has a Continuum of Housing and Services from street outreach
right along to community and private market housing; it is only logical to
match it with a cohesive administrative continuum under one Council
Committee, in this case, CPS.”

 

Again, please let me know if you are able to come on June 1st.

 

Thank you, 

 

Lynne

 

Lynne Browne

Coordinator, Alliance to End Homelessness (ATEH)

147 Besserer St., Ottawa, ON K1N 6A7

613-241-7913, ext. 205

HYPERLINK "http://www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca/"www.endhomelessnessottawa.ca

 


Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.12.11/2089 - Release Date: 30/04/2009
5:53 PM
 
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.web.net/lists/private/homeles_ot-l/attachments/20090520/70b6b094/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Open Letter PROPOSAL - Housing & Homelessness May 19,	2009.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 56222 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://list.web.net/lists/private/homeles_ot-l/attachments/20090520/70b6b094/attachment-0001.pdf>