The city of Fredericton says it is taking a major step in its goal of ending homelessness by creating a special committee to combat the ongoing problem.

Faith McFarland of the Community Action Group of Homelessness says the committee’s goal is to put an end to chronic homelessness in Fredericton by 2018.

She says it’s a goal that won’t be easy, but can be achieved.

“Initially we want to focus on people who've been trapped in the system the longest and then work to shorten the duration of homelessness across the entire population,” said McFarland.

The action group’s co-ordinator says that will lead to them achieving their next goal of no one living on Fredericton streets or in an emergency shelter for any longer than 10 days by 2026.

“We did a study in the winter, able to do a snapshot of people living in our shelter system and out on our streets and we saw that the average length of time people were homeless was 34.8 months,” said McFarland. “That's almost three years.”

It's estimated that between 700 and 800 people are without shelter every year in Fredericton. Mayor Mike O'Brien announced this week a special committee will report back by March with ways in which Fredericton can be more affordable place to live.

“We've got some community experts on engagement, fundraising, form, process, they're going to work with a lot of other people in the community to bring some new novel ideas to council to see if council can adopt them and take some action that we haven't done in the past,” said O’Brien.

Citizens ranging from architects and apartment building owners will be a part of the committee, with a large focus on creating more options for affordable housing.That will include identifying city-owned land that could be suitable for an affordable housing location.

“It’s not enough to house somebody for a night or just to be able to put warm socks on somebody's feet for a couple days,” said McFarland. “Real solutions rest in housing and the tight types of supports to maintain it.”

McFarland says other communities across Canada have inspired what Fredericton is trying to do, including Medicine Hat, Alta. where emergency shelter stay numbers have decreased.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore.