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Home Depot Canada Medicine Hat
Thursday May 14, 2015
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Medicine Hat, a burghal in southern Alberta, apprenticed in 2009 to put an end to homelessness. Now they say they've accomplished their promise.
No one in the burghal spends added than 10 canicule in an emergency apartment or on the streets. If you've got no abode to go, they'll artlessly provide you with housing.
"We're appealing abundant able to accommodated that accepted today. Alike quicker, actually, sometimes," Ambassador Ted Clugston tells As It Happens host Carol Off.
Housing is bound in Medicine Hat. Frequent calamity in the accomplished few years didn't advice matters. With money chipped in by the province, the burghal congenital abounding new homes.
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Ted Clugston is the ambassador of Medicine Hat, Alberta. (Photo: CBC)
Clugston admits that aback the project began in 2009, aback he was an alderman, he was an alive opponent of the plan.
"I alike said some impaired things like, 'Why should they accept granite countertops aback I don't,'" he says. "However, I've appear about to apprehend that this makes banking sense."
Clugston says that it costs about $20,000 a year to abode someone. If they're on the street, it can amount up to $100,000 a year.
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"This is the cheapest and the best accommodating way to amusement people," he says.
"Housing Aboriginal puts aggregate on its head. It acclimated to be, 'You appetite a home, get off the drugs or accord with your brainy bloom issues,'" Clugston says. "If you're absorbed to drugs, it's activity to be appealing adamantine to get off them, if you're sleeping beneath a esplanade bench."
I alike said some impaired things like, 'Why should they accept granite countertops aback I don't.' However, I've appear around.- Medicine Hat Ambassador Ted Clugston
And the action has worked. In Medicine Hat, emergency allowance visits and interactions with badge accept dropped. But there was one change that initially afraid Clugston — court appearances went up.
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"They end up ambidextrous with their past, atoning for their sins," he says.
Clugston believes that no one on the streets is unreachable.
He says burghal agents begin apartment for one man, but he insisted on abrogation to beddy-bye beneath cars. Day afterwards day, they'd chase him out and booty him aback to his new home.
"They did it 75 times, but they had the backbone and they didn't accord up on him and, eventually, he concluded up blockage in the house," he says. "Ultimately, bodies do appetite a roof over their heads."
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