Shelter operators sound alarm over funding crunch

Hamilton shelters are sounding the alarm over a funding crunch they say is making it difficult to “keep the doors open.”

Officials with Good Shepherd Centres and Mission Services told councillors Monday that government-funded shelters have not received a budget bump since 2014. The city largely acts as the co-ordinator to distribute about $7.5 million in provincial homelessness prevention dollars to seven different emergency shelters with about 335 beds.

That funding is not enough to cover rising power and salary costs, combined with unique new pressures like the opioid overdose crisis and more refugee claimants, said Good Shepherd Centre chief operating officer Katherine Kalinowski.

“We are increasingly in a position where we are asking ourselves how we will keep the doors open,” she told the health and safe communities committee. “We are now looking at a situation ... where we have to look at what programs we close, what cuts we make.”

The number of individuals using Hamilton shelters is actually dropping year over year.

Nonetheless, most shelters are deemed at “over capacity” much of the time because men, women and families are staying longer, Kalinowski said. (Youth shelters are the only ones that didn’t operate at full capacity last year.)

After the meeting, she said charitable agencies that run shelters will eventually be forced to consider cutting costs to nonshelter services like food banks, winter clothing programs or family services.

Kalinowski and Mission Services executive director Carol Cowan appealed for an increase in shelter funding but did not make a specific cash request.

The committee supported a motion from Coun. Sam Merulla to ask the province and Ottawa for additional funds through existing programs.