Carola Cunningham didn’t stop long for the congratulations when she received an honorary doctorate degree from MacEwan University late in the fall. There was far too much work still to do.
“That just blew my socks off. I'm so honoured and humbled,” she confirmed before quickly turning the topic to the progress that NiGiNan Housing Ventures has made and the great strides already firm in the making.
NiGiNan is a non-profit registered charity that works to create and operate supportive and affordable housing for Indigenous people in Edmonton. It was begun by a group of concerned social workers and health providers who saw time and again how many people were neglected when it came to housing.
So many people were tough to stay housed, Cunningham said, that something had to be done.
“And so, this group of tenacious women set off to lobby the government to have a place that was Indigenous-led, Indigenous-run, and served the people.”
A successful grant led to the opening of the doors at Ambrose Place, a four-storey building located at 9629 106 Ave. in Edmonton. It’s a progressive and multi-dimensional facility. There are 28 units combined on the second and third floors that are for supportive housing, while the 14 units on the fourth floor are available for those seeking safe, affordable housing. Residents can move from the supportive housing levels to the independent living fourth floor in the affordable housing units while remaining within their existing community.
The youngest current resident is 18; the oldest: 82.
It was named after Ambrose Daniels, an Indigenous man who died unnecessarily from pneumonia while living on the streets of Edmonton.
Cunningham, who is from St. Albert, was hired in August 2014 to take the already-begun project past some early stumbling blocks through to completion. The first residents moved in during November that year.
“The whole concept behind Ambrose Place was to house the hardest to house,” she recounted.
“When we started to interview and select people with the help of Alberta Health Services, our questions were more like, ‘How many limbs do they have? Are they suffering from addictions? Do they have mental-health issues?’ Everybody wanted to be in Ambrose, but we were definitely looking for the people that were most vulnerable and in need of some support.”
By the third month that it was open, the wait list was already up to 500 people.
Now, several years later, NiGiNan is making further strides. It recently acquired the former site of the Sands Inn and Suites hotel on Fort Road. Extensive renovations are needed first, but once done, the new site will provide 53 more long-term affordable rental units with on-site support to help up to 90 residents, 15 of which will be for Indigenous women only. Those residents will also benefit from 24-hour wraparound cultural and social services. Those on-site services will include full-time support workers and a housing manager overseeing operations while a full-time elder will also be on staff. The renos will also establish a large ceremony room for smudging ceremonies and prayer.
“We have now become … considered the gold standard of permanent supportive housing nationally. I believe that has to do with the way we run and treat our residents.”
It received $10.8 million, including $5.7 million from the federal government's Rapid Housing Initiative and $5 million from the City of Edmonton itself. NiGiNan works entirely off of grants and donations for its community-building work.
“The whole concept behind NiGiNan was to decolonize our people and allow them to regain their rightful place in that medicine wheel that we all fit in. What we started to see was basically some amazing transformations.”
The hotel renovation is already underway with an anticipated completion date in June 2022.
