Innovative Edmonton program providing housing for homeless ER patients set to expand
CBC
More than 300 patients without housing have gone from Edmonton emergency rooms directly into transitional accommodation since the launch of a unique program in March 2023.
Work is now underway for the Bridge Healing Transitional Accommodation Program to grow, with two additional buildings expected to come online late next year.
"It's making a big difference in the lives of patients that we're serving. It's reducing visits to the ER," said Dr. Louis Francescutti, an emergency room physician and professor at the University of Alberta.
"Our only problem is we don't have enough beds for the five emergency departments that are sending patients."
Bridge Healing is the brainchild of a team of students at the University of Alberta who took Francescutti's advocacy class. It opened its doors as a partnership between Alberta Health Services and the Jasper Place Wellness Centre.
The students' concept was simple: ask ER patients experiencing homelessness if they want a chance to start again.
If they say yes and qualify, they go directly to one of three 12-unit healing houses at 160th Street and 100th Avenue in the Glenwood neighbourhood.
But only if there's room.
According to provincial figures, unhoused people made 26,000 trips to Alberta emergency departments last year.
The only time Bridge Healing's 36 beds aren't fully occupied is when someone is checking out.
"We're probably going to need at least another 100 buildings at 12 beds, that's another 1,200 beds, because the demand is quite high," Francescutti said.
Bridge Healing started with one 12-unit building in March 2023. Two more opened in the fall of that year.
Two more 12-unit buildings will open in 2025, also in Glenwood, largely thanks to $815,000 in grants and land from the City of Edmonton.
The city also provided $290,000 in 2022 to help with capital costs associated with the pilot program.