Investing in homes for homeless women pays off

Let’s help them regain their rightful place in community, Florence Portes says.

The struggles of women living on the streets — our friends, sisters and neighbours — go largely unnoticed, not only during this week in which we mark International Women’s Day, but yearround.

Despite the centuries-long fight for equality between the sexes, women are the first to fall victim to poverty. The roof over their head is their last line of defence. Losing it is a crushing blow.

While homelessness doesn’t discriminate between men and women, life on the street is far more dangerous for women. And they know it. To avoid it, women will endure abuse and domestic violence. They’ll withdraw deep inside themselves and suffer in silence rather than leave their home.

The Old Brewery Mission’s Patricia Mackenzie Pavilion in Montreal takes in nearly 550 women each year. By the time they reach our emergency services, these women are exhausted.

Due to living on the margins of society for a variety of reasons — ranging from job loss to physical or mental-health problems to pure bad luck — they’ve lost every shred of self-confidence they once possessed.

However, we cannot — and will not — reduce these diverse experiences into a single storyline. The homeless women who knock on our door for help are all individuals and our role is to welcome them exactly as they are, not draw hasty conclusions or adopt one-size-fits-all solutions.

Providing shelter to homeless women isn’t a solution. It’s only part of the solution. We must support them in permanently escaping the hellish downward spiral of homelessness and reclaiming their rightful place in our community. This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s our vision.

Over the last decade, the cycle of poverty, illness and isolation has been extensively documented, analyzed and justifiably lamented. Even as the number of women on the street rises, the public face of homelessness remains male.

The notion that women are immune to homelessness by virtue of their gender is anachronistic, and our society deserves better than to continue thinking that way. We need to give every woman a place in which to thrive and live her life in a sustainable, healthy and safe environment.

Our recent experience has shown us that when we use the right tools and work together with our partners, not only can we achieve our goals, we can surpass them.

A good example of this is the Projet de réaffiliation en itinérance et santé mentale (PRISM) program, a partnership between the CHUM Hospital and the Old Brewery Mission. Since its inception at the Patricia Mackenzie Pavilion in March 2015, the program has allowed dozens of women to get the mental-health services they need and to move into sustainable housing suited to their needs.

We need more programs like this to make sure that homeless women with mental health problems get off the street, where they are more vulnerable to violence and sexual assault.

At the Patricia Mackenzie Pavilion, we’ve made housing the top priority. Stable and affordable housing is a gateway to counselling and other essential, life-changing programs. And guess what? It works! We’ve been able to secure housing for a large number of women, cutting the number of chronically homeless women registered for our services from 90 per cent to 10 per cent. We’re planning to expand the number of housing units we have available, but to do that, we need the financial support of our elected officials.

Based on what we’ve seen in recent years, we know that we have the power to make a real difference in the lives of the most vulnerable women in our society. And we can do that by increasing access to affordable housing and providing ongoing psychosocial support and adapted health care.

If we as a society invest in finding sustainable solutions, together we can put an end to chronic homelessness in women.

Providing shelter to homeless women isn’t a solution. It’s only part of the solution.