Women’s homelessness a hidden crisis

Despite an increase in funding, the problem continues, a new report from the social planning council shows

Supporting Our Sisters saved Tamara Hinds’ life.

Without her son and help from the wraparound program for women experiencing homelessness, the 47year-old said she “wouldn’t be here” today.

“Literally — not just homeless,” she told a Spectator editorial board meeting Monday.

Hinds, who sits on a committee of women with lived experience as part of the Women’s Housing Planning Collaborative (WHPC), has had her own “cute little place” for more than a year after moving from shelter to shelter, couch surfing and being forced into unsafe situations for almost six years. “Right now, it doesn’t matter how cold it gets outside because I have hope,” she said.

Despite success stories like Hinds, more funding is needed locally for longer-term solutions for women’s homelessness such as the comprehensive support offered through the Supporting Our Sisters program, according to a new report by the Social Planning and Research Council called “How’s the Weather Now?” being released Wednesday.

The report is a five-year update to “How’s the Weather?” — a question posed by WHPC, drawing attention to the growing yet often invisible crisis in Hamilton of single women at risk of or experiencing homelessness. From April 2015 to January 2018, 140 women with high risk factors including mental health, substance use and incidents of violence were housed through SOS, 105 of which maintained their housing past a year.

Some of these women were housed for the first time in decades, said Katherine Kalinowski, chief operating officer of Good Shepherd Centres Hamilton and chair of the WHPC, which began its work in 2012.

“There are real successes happening,” she added.

But there are also real challenges, and despite a shift toward applying a gender lens to address women’s homelessness in Hamilton, the report reveals a crisis still exists with no end in sight. While the overall funding investment for homelessness services directed through the city’s housing division has increased $2.1 million across all demographics — with the women’s system receiving $1.7 million of it — since 2013, more funding is needed for emergency services for women. It was 1995 before Hamilton had its first emergency shelter beds specifically for women at Mary’s Place.

“What we know is that we continue to turn women away a tremendous number of times every month,” Kalinowski said.

On average, shelter staff are turning away women 19 times per night due to a lack of bed space in emergency beds for women and Violence Against Women shelters, according to the report. Despite this, it would be a “very, very rare occasion” that a woman would be turned away completely, as local women’s services work together to see who can make space, Kalinowski said. There have been times women have been transported to other communities, and other times women have slept in arm chairs. .

In December, the city’s emergency shelter beds for women were operating at 109 per cent capacity, the report reads. “I don’t want to see people fall through the cracks,” Kalinowski said. “We’ve seen a lot of women die over the years, if not directly on the streets, certainly in clear relationship to their experience of homelessness.”

According to WHPC, it’s more expensive to keep people in shelters than in their own space. While the data isn’t available for women, it costs roughly $14,500 a year for a man to stay in a shelter bed for a year, not taking into account potential additional expenses like health care and emergency services incurred later on. That compares to the approximately $12,000 it costs to house a man for a year in an apartment with supports and subsidies.

The report identifies steps still needed:

• Fully funding the National Housing Strategy with a 25 per cent focus on women and girls and a human rights approach to housing

• A portable housing benefit to provide support directly to people in need of housing

• Social assistance reform

• Increased funding for housing with supports

• New affordable housing to compensate for aging stock and increasing population

All are welcome to attend the report release Feb. 14 at 1 p.m. at Willow’s Place, 196 Wentworth St. N.