A hub to help the homeless
Text spurs fast response to sudden crisis
It started with a text message.
As the pandemic took hold and people hunkered in homes last March, longtime Saskatoon housing advocate Chris Randall saw a potential disaster unfolding: People without walls or a roof, nowhere to hunker. Open doors abruptly closed in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“If you were homeless during that time, suddenly, there was basically nothing for you in the community,” Randall says. “People suddenly found there were no options available to them.”
Texts between “three or four people,” including Randall, spread and grew. Soon, people from more than 90 community agencies connected on Zoom, talking about how they could help in the most grassroots of ways during an unprecedented crisis.
Those conversations led to the quick creation of two hubs. One, at the Salvation Army, was phased out. The other continues to run at the White Buffalo Youth Lodge.
The hub helps clients navigate income assistance, and has a direct line to the provincial ministry of social services. In those opening months, local agencies loaned staff to the hubs and paid for their shifts.
Randall says other cities used Saskatoon's model as a blueprint.
He tells of a man who entered a 40-day rehab program three weeks before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Saskatchewan. After exiting the program, the man found he was unable to return to his previous shelter because of restrictions. He headed to social services, to be met by a sign stating the organization was closed because of the pandemic.
Someone suggested he try the White Buffalo hub.
“We were able to get him housed within three hours of walking in the door,” Randall says. “This is somebody who — in the middle of April — would have spent that night, if not multiple nights, sleeping rough on the streets, homeless, on a park bench, somewhere in Saskatoon.
“That's the work we did, and it's the work that's continuing to be done.”