A better way to help the homeless
Can COVID-19 pandemic lead to improved support for people living rough?
If there really is a so-called ‘new normal’ after COVID-19, Karen Orlandi hopes it includes better ways to help homeless people.
The coronavirus has upended a lot of people’s lives. But for those living rough, “there was no place to sleep at this time last year, either,” says Orlandi, a minister at Silver Spire United Church in St. Catharines.
“There was no place for dinner last year, either.”
Every spring when the Out of the Cold overnight shelter closes, about 45 people in St. Catharines have to find somewhere to sleep.
It’s the same in Niagara Falls. In Welland, there is no Out of the Cold shelter.
“This is not new and it’s not pandemic-driven,” says Orlandi. “People not having a place to be and to sit and to sleep happens every April.”
After Out of the Cold closed in Niagara Falls, a small community tent community sprang up near Victoria Avenue north of Bridge Street.
Year-round shelters across Niagara function at or near capacity. In March, Niagara Region committed nearly $12 million more over three years, in an effort to open more beds at nine of the shelters.
In St. Catharines, the Out of the Cold shelter at Westminster United Church had to close a week early in late March due to social distancing concerns.
Also due to social distancing, suppers for homeless people held at seven downtown churches had to be stopped, mostly because volunteers were older and more vulnerable to COVID-19.
Silver Spire continued them until Easter, with most of the meals being given as takeout. It got it done, and some nights served nearly 300 people.
“It was insane,” says Orlandi. “We put out requests for volunteers, they came and helped, and the churches stepped up — they were all still cooking, they would bring food to us.”
At the same time, Start Me Up Niagara, which works with people dealing with homelessness, addiction, mental illness and poverty, had to close its Church Street and Gale Crescent sites, stop some services and shift others to different locations.
For a while its drop-in centre moved to Silver Spire, and now is hosted at Westminster.
Whereas it used to see 150 to 200 people, now it can handle only 15 to 25 each day, says Start Me Up director Susan Venditti.
“And we ratcheted up our services to be more focused on getting people housed,” she says. “If you’re homeless, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure you’re housed.”
Under the circumstances, she adds, “it’s going pretty well.”
“Some people come in and they just want to rest, because you don’t get a good night’s sleep outside,” she says. “It’s going amazingly well.”
But she adds, “Everybody is scared. If you already have anxiety, or mental health or substance abuse problems and you can’t use your normal support systems or get your prescriptions, all this adds more and more stress to life.”
Like Orlandi, Venditti hopes the ‘new normal’ means a better way to ease homelessness, to get people some sort of home they can call their own.
“I think what really makes a difference in your life is having a door that you can lock,” she says.
“You can go into your own place, your things are safe, you can take care of your basic needs, cook your own meals. You have your own little place.”
If people have a little money left at the end of the month and the pride of having a home — rather than sleeping outdoors
— everyone benefits.
“I think if we stop and look at the emergency things we were able to deliver on almost a zero timeline, that same energy might carry forward into having some more permanent solutions,” she says.
Cathy Cousins, homelessness services director for Niagara Region, says she hopes “one of the positives that might come out of a thing like this is the attention that has been paid to the homelessness population.”
During the COVID-19 emergency, “our hotels have really stepped up for us,” providing rooms for homeless people at greatly reduced rates.
That eased the load on the year-round shelters. It also allowed Cousins and her staff to move some of the more vulnerable people — due to age or medical condition — into hotel rooms where they could selfisolate.
At the same time, it opened an
isolation centre for homeless people who showed symptoms of COVID-19.
“Just as if you or I were symptomatic, we’d get told to go home. Well, they don’t have a home,” she says.
So far nearly 45 people have stayed there, and eight are there now, but none have tested positive for the coronavirus. Niagara Regional Police Const. Phil Gavin said officers work with community groups to check on the welfare of people living on the street.
“We try to balance empathy and enforcement,” he said, adding officers on foot patrol in downtown St. Catharines engage with homeless people, while in Niagara Falls there is an officer dedicated to that.
It’s been a whirlwind; services, largely volunteer-driven, were maintained. But, says Orlandi, it’s been hard on people who are living rough.
Public bathrooms are scarce. Some of the places where they used to sleep, like parks, are off limits.
“We need to change society’s way of looking at things and build more blended neighbourhoods,” she says.
“I think through COVID-19 we’ve realized that housing one kind of people all in one place is really not healthy. It certainly hasn’t worked in old folks homes.” found neither credible.
Walters found Magistrale’s denial particularly troubling and said it significantly impacted his credibility before the court.
Hall’s lawyer, Peter Waldmann of Toronto, provided evidence about what the arrest and criminal trial cost his client. Hall spent $71,881.55 on legal fees fighting the charge of attempted theft. He also spent $106,603 on legal fees to obtain benefits from Sun Life Insurance.
After the judge dismissed the criminal charges, Hall went to arbitration over his $71,000-ayear job.
Ultimately, after a 24-year career with an unblemished record, Hall received a settlement totalling $5,000 in lieu of wages, and $25,000 in general damages relating to the Ontario Human Rights Code. He said he is now officially retired.