Former Edmonton mayor reflects on 2009 promise to end homelessness in a decade
Posted November 10, 2026 10:15 am.
Just before the weekend, Canada’s prime minister unveiled a new budget with a bold promise to end homelessness in a decade.
Now, that’s something Edmontonians have heard before from their own city council back in 2009.
With that plan not coming to fruition, and now another level of government taking a run at this bold vision, CityNews caught up with former Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel to talk about what went wrong with that commitment and what can go better this time around.
CityNews: What didn’t go right with Edmonton’s plan?
Mandel: I think a couple of things. First of all, government didn’t maintain their commitment. Government didn’t understand the necessary commitment. It’s not just one aspect. You’ve got all kinds of problems, whether it’s health problems, addiction problems, housing problems — many, many problems.
And then it became a little less significant to fund it. And I really believe an awful lot of it is there was too much government and not enough of the public.
One of the things that we thought was really important was we had the Homeless Commission, which really was a citizen-formed body that acted as a liaison between government and community to make sure that the public knew what was going on. And I feel that’s really lacking today. It’s all about the government being involved. Government’s gonna give money, the government’s gonna do that, and the public are kind of pushed aside.
So what do you wish would’ve gone differently in your time that would’ve kept that momentum rolling? Because it did get off to a hot start early in the beginning.
Oh, we did. When I left, the thing started in 2009. I left in ’13, and we had taken the homelessness from about 3,000 down to 1,750. That’s a pretty big jump. So I can’t speak to what happened afterwards other than I know the Homeless Commission was eliminated, and maybe the momentum didn’t continue. I don’t know.
But during the period I was there, we, I think, made great inroads. Now, that’s not to say that the people who came after us did nothing, I just don’t know what they did.
Now that we’ve got this new plan, this new promise coming forward, right, what would you like to see? What do you hope goes a little bit differently? Is there anything that you feel would gives them a bigger start and something that would keep that momentum going forward through to the end of the decade that they’re looking for?
Well, they have to get public involvement. These things cannot be done only with government money.
You really need to have the people across the city supporting it. You need to have agencies and individuals really advocating for what’s needing at the time. Money’s coming in, but money comes in from a government agency. They’re a long way away from where the problems exist. And so you really need those at the local level who can help push the direction of where it’s needed.
And so I think that that’s a big part of it, getting the public involved and getting more involvement from agencies that are local, understand the situation, understand the problems.
