The City of Calgary made a commitment to engage its citizens in discussions to develop a homelessness strategy including a framework for whether or when The City should contribute to emergency shelters and services. Deliberative dialogue was chosen as the methodology to gather that input because of the complexity and emotional investment of the issue of homelessness, and it was intended to encourage in-depth discussion, reflection and learning, and promoting a focus on common ground. Four dialogue sessions were organized with 15 randomly selected lay citizens per session, totaling 60 participants. Each session was facilitated to encourage the 15 participants to engage in a three-hour dialogue to give advice about who should pay to shelter the homeless, where the funds should be found, the values and principles that should underpin such funding decisions and what The City should be doing to address homelessness. Many of the Calgarians who participated in these dialogues expressed distress not only about the growth and challenges of homelessness in Calgary, but also about how little they knew prior to the discussions. Citizens worked hard and felt a sense of accomplishment at the end of the sessions. They underscored the importance of informed discussions to build a strong Calgary community. The results of this dialogue provided decision-makers with the citizens’ vision of how The City should be involved in addressing homelessness in Calgary and the underlying values that informed their choices. Their insight and wisdom was to be considered carefully along with other sources of research and policy analysis. A note was made that there was no green light to raise property taxes to fund this role – first Calgarians needed to understand the depth and breadth of the need, and to know that the City was doing all it could to see that other levels of government paid their share. Other revenue sources were also to be explored.
Summary Credit:
Homelessness-Related Research Capacities in Alberta: A Comprehensive Environmental Scan, prepared by Dr. Katharina Kovacs Burns, MSc, MHSA, PhD and Dr. Solina Richter, PhD, RN for The Alberta Homelessness Research Consortium (2010)