Housing frees up for more women escaping abuse
DAVE LAZZARINO
The economy is playing a role for women escaping domestic abuse, annual numbers released Thursday suggest.
The statistics, released by the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, came from 40 organizations that manage 36 emergency shelters, 13 second-stage shelters and two seniors shelters around the province.
“Demand for shelter services this year overall is pretty much holding steady,” said Jan Reimer, the council’s executive director.
She said clear evidence of how the waning economy has affected the total-use numbers may be around the corner. So far, the biggest change has been seen in the demand found in cities and rural communities.
A decline in energy jobs in rural areas has opened affordable housing for women leaving shelter.
“With the downturn, that housing stock is freeing up and women have more options than they may have had last year,” Reimer said, adding that translates to shorter stays at shelters for women and children. It is different in the cities. “We’re always very busy. We’re operating at capacity all the time,” said Liza Sunley, director of the Lurana Shelter in Edmonton. “One of the biggest indicators for us is the length of stay. People are staying in the shelter a long time, so that’s not freeing up the beds for additional families to come in.”
Sunley said the demand is always constant and may have more to do with availability of beds than the economy.
Last September, the province made $15 million available for shelters, meaning more programs could be offered to move women through the shelters and more quickly into more stable housing.
That reduced the number of people turned away from shelters last year to just under 16,500 from more than 18,500 a year before.
“Additional beds is the next thing if we want to reduce the number of people that we’re having to turn away,” Sunley said. “We’re doing a good job of hopefully getting people through faster and helping them get housed faster, and really supporting them while they’re with us. The next step would be the actual infrastructure itself.”
The provincial dollars are only part of the equation. In 2010, the federal government cut funding for new shelter infrastructure altogether, giving the money to provinces instead in the form of affordable housing funds.
Reimer said neither the former provincial nor federal governments showed any interest in building new shelters. She said she hopes the federal government may follow the province’s lead by investing in shelters.
The full stats are available online through the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters.