Streets Alive Mission says most vulnerable will suffer due to denial of funding

Lethbridge City Council voted 6-3 against providing over $215,000 of federal funding for Streets Alive Mission’s Outreach Programming. Officials from Streets Alive told us the money would have been used to help out many of those who are homeless.

Ken Kissick, one of the co-founders of the Christian organization, says this decision will hurt our city’s most vulnerable.

“This is funding that we use for providing the 24-hour outreach that we have been doing since the beginning of January and the twelve hour a day outreach that we’ve been doing since August. That will end here at the end of March and there will no longer be any of those services provided to the street population. Our greatest concern is is that that this significantly reduces the wellbeing and health delivery that was happening through the outreach. So overdoses and those kinds of things. Frostbite, you can expect all of that to go up.”

Kissick says there is still around $157,000 of municipal funding but Streets Alive is waiting to hear back on if that money can stay with them or if city officials have other ideas.