The City of Lethbridge has developed a variety of community social development reports and studies to help create an inclusive and safe community where residents can access the social services and resources they need.
Community Wellbeing and Safety Strategy (CWSS)
The Community Wellbeing and Safety Strategy, updated in 2024, identifies community needs, gaps in services, priority populations and other strategic actions that contribute to the wellbeing of individuals, families and the community. It's a guiding document for the funding allocation and strategic work of CSD and supports the alignment between the work of the municipality and community stakeholders.
The City of Lethbridge has developed or funded the development of reports intended to support the actions of the municipality in it's role to support the development of housing within the community:
The Shelter Development Strategy outlines the City’s role and responsibility in ensuring there is adequate shelter capacity and diversity, to appropriately house people experiencing homelessness in the Community on any given night. The strategy frames the municipality’s role in reducing barriers to shelter development through land use regulation, land banking & asset rationalization and capital funding.
The Downtown Clean and Safe Strategy (DCSS) was approved by City Council in 2018/19 as a City-led strategy with one-year of funding. The strategy was developed with stakeholders including Heart of Our City Committee, Downtown Lethbridge Business Revitalization Zone, Chamber of Commerce, Lethbridge Police Service, Diversion Outreach Team/Canadian Mental Health, and business and residents of Downtown.
The strategy highlights, coordinates and implements the initiatives, programs and tasks the City is doing to address the negative perceptions on cleanliness and safety in the Downtown (and adjacent areas). The initiatives and tasks impact some of the underlying issues of the drug crisis such as homelessness, addiction and unemployment, however it does not attempt to solve these.
In 2020, an updated document was presented to City Council to share the impacts over the first six months of implementation and secure funding for ongoing implementation 2020-2022. Current active initiatives include:
These initiatives were funded in full or in part by programs identified in the 2023-2026 City of Lethbridge Operating Budget C11.1, C11.2, C11.3, C11.4, and C11.5 (Pg 190-194).
Annual Community Homelessness Report
The Community Homelessness Report (CHR) is an annually-submitted Reaching Home reporting deliverable intended to support communities in preventing and reducing homelessness through a coordinated response. Within the report, communities self-assess their progress in a number of domains supporting these aims.
Point-in-Time (PiT) Count Reports
Every other year, we conduct a PiT report, which is a count of the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city on a single night. During the count, we also surveyed people staying in shelters, short-term housing or sleeping without shelter to gather self-reported data and their own perspectives. This provides a community-wide measure of homelessness which helps us plan for the requires support systems and services required to prevent and reduce homelessness.
We have also conducted administrative counts, which rely on reported data from service facilities and systems rather than street counts and self-reported experiences of homelessness.
View the following PiT counts and reports and administrative reports from recent years:
The Vibrant Lethbridge Poverty Report profiles the prevalence low-income indicators and factors in our community and the challenges that our low-income residents face. The goal of this report is to examine the impact of poverty in our community, bring awareness to it and determine effective actions that we can take to reduce the impact of poverty in Lethbridge.
We conducted focus group research with various low-income and at-risk groups in our community to help people more fully appreciate and understand their lived experiences.
The Age Friendly Lethbridge Community Profile is a collaboration of community stakeholders working together to shape an age-friendly community. We aim to promote healthy and active aging for our senior community by providing access to the community supports and services it needs.
View the Executive Summary of the Age Friendly Lethbridge Community Profile to learn more about the goals and background studies that helped shape the community profile.
While often thought of as a big-city problem, illicit drug addiction has accelerated in small towns across Canada. The 50 Voices of Recovery: Addressing the Drug Addiction Crisis in Lethbridge study documents how adults addicted to opioids, cocaine, and/or methamphetamines in Lethbridge are finding recovery and putting their lives back together again.
Contact Us
City Hall
910 4 Avenue South
Lethbridge, AB T1J 0P6
Phone: 311
or 403-320-3111 (if outside of Lethbridge)
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