Dauphin’s Parkview Lodge a model program By: Scott Billeck Posted: 12:10 PM CDT Saturday, Mar. 29, 2025 Last Modified: 12:22 PM CDT Saturday, Mar. 29, 2025

WINNIPEG — When Drake arrived at Parkview Lodge in January, he was in desperate need of help.

The 20-year-old had recently been evicted from his home and ended up in hospital, where he realized it was time for a change.

“It made me a horrible person,” he said of his past struggles with substance use.

Originally from Skownan First Nation, located about 300 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Drake, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons, was referred to a pilot project operating in an 11-storey Manitoba Housing complex in Dauphin, where he has access to a broad range of wraparound supports that are all located under the same roof.

In the past three months, he has attended regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and focused on his education, retaking high school courses to build a stronger resumé.

His ultimate goal is to find employment and eventually secure his own affordable housing.

He is certain that he wouldn’t have received the help he needed if the Housing Foundations program didn’t exist.

“It’s helped me out with my confidence … being off of drugs and stuff like that,” he said.

The year-old program has become part of the province’s recently announced plan to end chronic homelessness. In a short time, it has shown that in combination with accessible support services, affordable housing can offer more than just a place to live — it can be a pathway to stability and success.

Its impact has caught the attention of Housing Minister Bernadette Smith and earned praise from Dauphin’s leaders, including Mayor David Bosiak, who credits the program with easing pressure on emergency rooms and police services; the RCMP report having fewer run-ins with some of the residents.

“The program has led to a decrease in police calls for mental-health checks,” Bosiak said. “Our safe, warm space has had a reduction in the number of calls.”

Since its launch last April, all 15 participants referred to the program have remained housed — a significant achievement that speaks to the importance of providing additional supports.

“We’ve got one participant who has now been housed longer as an adult than they’ve ever been housed except for when they were incarcerated,” said Samantha Murray, district manager with the Manitoba Housing Authority.

“You’re not going to see success overnight, but if you can see somebody housed over winter who has never successfully done that, that is a success.”

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A “one-stop shop” is how Randy Daley recalls the initial framework of what’s now Housing Foundations.

The Dauphin city councillor and former RCMP officer imagined a space where individuals could be assessed by mental-health professionals, welfare workers and other support services in the same place before being connected to further care.

The vision came to life in early November 2019 with the launch of Under One Roof, a program run by the city’s Crisis Prevention Task Force, which Daley chaired.

Operating out of Dauphin First United Church, the initiative brought together several organizations, including the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network, Addictions Foundation of Manitoba and Prairie Mountain Health.

In addition to hot meals, it also provided health-care services, hygiene and harm-reduction supplies, STI testing, community referrals and housing information.

Advertised as open to all who need support, the program even provided free transportation for clients.

Showing an immediate impact, city council approved a $15,000 grant to extend the program. The plan was to continue it well into 2020, but then the pandemic hit.

“COVID kicked us in the teeth,” Daley said. “Everything kind of went sideways from there for everybody.”

Yet many of the service providers agreed it was worth trying to resuscitate the program, Bosiak said, though at a different location.

Daley, Murray and a small team started looking at Parkview Lodge, a run-down 55-plus Manitoba Housing building with high vacancy rates.

This time, the plan was more ambitious.

Instead of a weekly drop-in with limited after-hours support, the new plan — nearly complete by the time Premier Wab Kinew’s government took office in 2023 — proposed leveraging those vacant suites for a permanent housing solution with daily wraparound supports.

Murray, who was working on the front lines as a tenant services co-ordinator at the time, had seen first-hand the frustrating maze people faced when seeking housing.

“If someone comes and says they need housing and we say that they have to go to their (Employment and Income Assistance) office first and get your file open, and then EIA says you need to go to your doctor and get forms filled out to see if you qualify for disability, and they get kicked all over to these different agencies … that can be exhausting for someone who is doing really well and having a good day,” she said.

But that was never the reality for many desperate to find housing.

Many seeking a roof over their heads were dealing with addictions or mental-health issues, lacked transportation and had often gone without sleep.

“People just give up,” Murray said.

She spent a lot of time thinking about how to avoid that. The answer was finding a way to get everybody in the same building.

“This was sort of where the whole idea hatched from,” she said.

The plan advanced to the new NDP government called for 20 suites to be renovated to accept referrals for housing that would include daily accessible wraparound supports.

But its success hinged on one critical component — funding for robust security.

“We quickly went (to meet the province) and they said, ‘Let’s do it,’” Daley said.

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Smith, the housing minister, visited Dauphin early last year to meet with local politicians, planners and the building’s tenants, ensuring they were on board with the proposed changes.

“I wanted to see if it was something that (the tenants) would be interested in,” she said. “We always want to talk to tenants, collaborate with them and make sure they’re OK with what we’re moving forward with, and make sure they understand it’s going to bring added value and that they would also be able to access the services and it would bring safety and security.”

Security was considered paramount. Most of the program’s funding is spent on protecting its tenants.

Referrals come from various sources, including Manitoba Justice and the health-care system. And it’s not just about homelessness.

The program also houses two individuals who have recently aged out of Child and Family Services care. In other cases, maintaining tenancies for some would be impossible without the co-ordinated support system.

When a referral comes in, a committee sits down with the person’s history and begins charting a course for comprehensive support.

No two plans are identical.

“For some, that means not having a swipe card to get in and out of the building,” Murray said. “They have to be let in and out by security. Otherwise, their swipe cards would be stolen or sold.”

For others, overnight visitors are not allowed because, in the past, it’s what has caused them to be evicted elsewhere. Some are required to have weekly visits with a public health nurse or their addictions worker.

People are vulnerable, says James Wigley, chief executive officer of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Swan Valley branch.

CMHA’s involvement in the program includes its Community Housing with Supports service, which works with people who have experienced chronic or episodic homelessness to find and keep housing of their choice in the community.

“A person who has been experiencing homelessness for a long period of time … is in survival mode,” Wigley said. “An individual’s peers help keep a person safe when they don’t have a place to go to.”

But what occasionally happens is that when someone gets housed, all of a sudden those peers begin showing up and, because they offered assistance on the street, there can be a sense of obligation to make things square, he said.

“From that standpoint, security is huge,” he said. “We would absolutely see additional challenges without it.”

In every case, rules are agreed upon during the referral process by the committee and the prospective tenant.

“It’s completely voluntary,” Murray said. Some have declined a spot in the program, not willing to abide by the rules.

But for those who’ve entered, the success has been motivating.

“We’ve got some people who have done extremely well and backed off some of the services and are doing well on their own,” she said.

One of the program’s hallmarks is that no one is forced out once a certain level of independence is reached, Murray said.

“Because that’s just going to restart you way back at the beginning,” she said. “So they can stay, and if things start going sideways … we pull them back in.”

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CMHA in Swan River began a four-and-a-half-month temporary housing project that began just before the start of Dauphin’s pilot. The aim was to demonstrate that the Dauphin model could be replicated in other communities.

It was operated out of 10 vacant rooms at a local motel and had the same security being used at Parkview Lodge.

“When somebody is stably housed, the return on investment of that cost on the other end is huge,” Wigley said.

The Swan River initiative saw a remarkable decline in police involvement, with interactions dropping from more than 60 calls to just two among the tenants housed.

Despite the success, the funding has not been extended to continue the program in the area.

“That right there — when RCMP resources aren’t deploying resources like that, and they’re more on the street and helping keeping communities safe in other aspects — then how much money are we actually saving?” Wigley said. “And at the end of the day, how much does it actually cost?”

He firmly believes chronic homelessness will never be solved without proper funding to ensure support services such as those offered at Housing Foundations are seen as equally important, if not more, than four walls and a roof.

“It really comes down to adequate funding and support for a model that is all-encompassing of the spectrum (of people) that is homelessness, that includes mental-health and illness challenges, as well as substance-abuse disorders,” he said. “That’s what this project aims to prove.”

During the 2023 provincial election, Kinew campaigned heavily on tackling poverty and homelessness, pledging to end chronic homelessness within two terms by accelerating access to housing.

His government’s first budget in 2024 earmarked millions toward reducing homelessness and expanding social and affordable housing.

It also set aside $14 million to support a variety of initiatives, including $560,000 for Dauphin’s program and a similar one in downtown Winnipeg, where 20 renovated suites at 444 Kennedy St. — a previously run-down Manitoba Housing complex for low-income seniors — are occupied.

“And it’s (the provincial homelessness strategy) still underfunded,” Wigley said.

In January, the province announced its Your Way Home initiative, aimed at curbing chronic homelessness.

Part of the plan includes 300 new social-housing units that have been purchased and are undergoing renovation. Like Dauphin, these units will include wraparound support services from local non-profits.

“We learned when we went to Houston that folks often won’t leave to go and get the support, but when support comes to them, often that’s what leads them to the support,” Smith said, referring to the delegation she led last summer to Texas to observe the city’s successful strategy in addressing homelessness.

“We’ve heard from people in encampments and people that are homeless that there’s a distrust, and we really need to build that trust and that relationship. (The Dauphin project) is one of the pilots we’ve been able to learn off of and build off of.”

As for Parkview Lodge, Murray is unsure of the project’s next steps but is optimistic the model can be replicated, particularly in rural areas.

She also believes it can be effective in a large city such as Winnipeg.

“I lived there for years, and you could live in Winnipeg and never leave a neighbourhood,” she said. “Agencies, I think, tend to sort of work that way, tend to have little districts and pockets.”

For Dauphin’s pilot, Murray specifically hopes to build off the existing framework. That’s also Bosiak’s wish.

“The project has worked, it is working, and we could probably occupy another 10, maybe even 20 suites if we had the professional support services that are required to provide that wraparound service,” he said. “We hope it continues to get funding to keep it working as it is.

“It doesn’t stop here. It needs to continue to grow.”

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