Days after municipal stopgap funding for Ark Aid Street Mission and 519 Pursuit ran out, the federal government awarded city hall $2.5 million from the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampment Initiative (UHEI). However, neither frontline agency is guaranteed to receive a portion of the UHEI funding to continue services that expired on July 31. On Monday, the Community and Protective Services Committee unanimously recommended directing $2.1 million of the UHEI funding towards the upcoming Winter Response to Homelessness. An additional $350,000 will reimburse a municipal reserve account that had funded a four-month extension of daytime drop-in spaces at Ark Aid and encampment outreach provided by 519 Pursuit. “Just during the bridge funding that was provided, we had over 66,000 service interactions and 31,000 meals served,” explained Sarah Campbell, executive director of Ark Aid Street Mission. “That’s just at the 696 Dundas St. location during the four hours [per day] that we were funded.” The extension was intended to bridge the financial gap between the announcement of the new UHEI program on April 1, and the disbursement of its dollars to the municipalities this summer. However, Ark Aid and 519 Pursuit will wait longer for a funding decision. The motion supported by the CAPS Committee recommended directing city staff to report back to a future committee meeting, “respecting the procurement of any necessary services, including services previously funded through UHEI.” “I don’t want to be presumptuous to say, let’s just continue to extend the previous services that were funded under UHEI,” explained Mayor Josh Morgan. “But let’s actually have staff do the work of looking at what is necessary in the system, how we would properly procure that under a transparent and fair process, and then how we would potentially fund it with some of the money we restored.” Civic administration said it would bring back a report in September. “It is wonderful that the City of London received UHEI funding,” Deputy City Manager Kevin Dickins told the CAPS Committee on Monday. “It is not fantastic that it falls outside of when we would have liked to have made decisions back in May and June. But here we are, so we will be moving as fast as we can.” After the meeting, Coun. Corrine Rahman emphasized that smaller amounts of funding can be distributed by city staff using delegated authorities that do not require direct council approval. “What we can do right now is we can sign the (UHEI) agreement,” Rahman explained. “We can flow dollars using money that we currently have, that staff have delegated authority to spend, while we await the report back on how to use those unspent dollars.” Morgan suggested the report would assist council in extracting the maximum benefit from the limited dollars that are available. “Find out with the highest and best need is for this money through a procurement process where we’re actually going to do an analysis, engage with agencies, find out what they can do, and how they would report, in a very transparent and open process,” said Morgan. Council will make a final decision on August 25.
