City shelters stretched to the limit in cold snap

Alert could remain in place until Sunday

As a blast of Arctic air continues to blanket the city, some local homeless shelters where resources were already stretched say the pressure is growing.

Men’s shelters have operated close to capacity during this recent cold snap, which started Christmas Day. When it comes to services for women, the demand is even greater, and not just as the temperature dips.

“The pressure in the women’s shelter system is persistent and alarming and at crisis level,” said Katherine Kalinowski, Good Shepherd’s assistant executive director of programs. “We are turning away year-round.

“We simply don’t have enough resources to support all the women.”

Hamilton’s medical officer of health issued a cold weather alert Dec. 25, which is expected to remain in effect until at least Sunday.

During that time, the Salvation Army’s shelter — which includes 82 beds, 10 overflow beds plus additional mattresses on the floor — has been running close to capacity, said public relations director Dan Millar.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in people coming to the shelter,” he said.

It’s a similar situation at Good Shepherd, which operates a shelter for adult men, one for families experiencing homelessness, another for youth, one for women, and another for women and children fleeing situations of violence and abuse.

“Right through the Christmas sea-

son and certainly over the last few days, we’ve been operating at capacity or more often over capacity in all of our centres,” explained Kalinowski.

Shawn MacKeigan, director of men’s services at Mission Services, said they have not experienced a significant change in demand at their 58-bed shelter, nor are they operating overcapacity.

If that were to happen, shelters work together to find people a place to stay the night and transportation to get there, he said.

Shelter occupancy is high and inching up in Hamilton.

The overall average occupancy for November 2017 was 95.4 per cent, up from 91.8 per cent the same month the year before. This year’s annual average can’t be calculated yet, but the city says it’s on pace to be higher than 2016, when it was 96.2 per cent.

“Shelters have been operating over capacity for the last few days, however shelters continue to accommodate all individuals who are seeking space,” city spokesperson Allison Jones said in an email. “No individuals have been turned away from shelter.”

An increase has been felt at Carole Anne’s Place, a shelter overflow program providing roughly a dozen spots for homeless women when single women’s shelters are full.

Now in its second year, the program — funded by Hamilton’s Out of the Cold program and run out of a gymnasium space at the YWCA’s seniors’ centre — has seen a dramatic change from last year, said Violetta Nikolskaya, manager of transitional living programs at the YWCA.

While they often saw between four and seven women last year, this year’s average has been 10, with 11 women sleeping on air mattresses most nights, she said.

“What’s really terrifying is, this is on top of the fact that all of the women’s shelters have over-capacity beds that are full,” Nikolskaya said. “These are the women who would have no other refuge from the cold had it not been for Carole Anne’s Place.”

Deirdre Pike, co-ordinator of the Women’s Housing Planning Collaborative, said an average of 20 women a night are being turned away from local shelters and instead are turning to places like Carole Anne’s Place, coffee shops, malls and hospital waiting areas.

She would like to see immediate action taken, such as temporarily opening up the main floor of Hamilton City Hall until people can access appropriate housing.

“It’s about permanent housing and permanent resources,” Pike said.

In Toronto, where they are also experiencing an extended cold snap, the city is revisiting a shelved proposal to use a federal armoury to cope with unprecedented demand on its homeless shelter system.