Efforts continue to reopen emergency shelter for homeless youth in Swift Current

The lights are still off in Dorie’s House, an emergency shelter for homeless youth that was built through community support, but efforts have continued during the past year to open the doors again.

The annual general meeting of Southwest Youth Emergency Shelter (YES), a non-profit organization that works to address youth homelessness in southwest Saskatchewan, took place in Swift Current, July 16.

Shaun Hanna, the Southwest YES board president, spoke to the Prairie Post a few days later about the organization’s activities during the past year.

“The last year has been a lot of behind scenes sort of activity,” he said. “Even though we’re not fully open to clients, we’re still very much active in terms of our lobbying efforts as well as fundraising.”

A key long-term goal of the organization is to become self sustaining, and funds raised during the past year helped to build a trust fund.

“Any of the donations that go into our accounts first and foremost help to offset any of the expenses of the day to day running of the house,” he said. “We still have expenses associated with owning a property, but the rest of it all goes into the trust fund.”

The volunteer board members have given attention to policy issues during the past year and they gathered information about best practices relevant to the operation of a youth shelter.

Networking was a key part of this process, and a highlight was the opportunity to participate in the inaugural Canadian Rural and Remote Housing and Homelessness Symposium.

The three-day event was held in Canmore, Alberta, in October 2018 and the host organization was the Alberta Rural Development Network (ARDN).

“That particular symposium was a national gathering of people from every level of government as well as NGOs, academics and community organizers, and from every province and territory in the nation,” he said. “So it was really a great chance to come together and look at what other communities are facing in terms of either funding challenges or building challenges, or how are they using innovative methods to tackle precarious homelessness in rural communities.”

A practical outcome from attending that symposium was the development of a partnership with ARDN, which combines the expertise of nine Albertan colleges and universities to support rural development. ARDN’s point in time count system for rural areas will be used during the next year to provide updated information about homelessness in southwest Saskatchewan.

“ARDN developed what’s called a point in time count system for rural areas, and that’s basically a snapshot picture of what homelessness or precarious housing look like in an area,” he explained. “When you’re dealing with a transient population that’s constantly in flux in rural areas, it’s indeed more difficult to count the bodies, but ARDN has developed a way or survey of doing that.”

Southwest YES is also looking forward to partnering with A Way Home Canada, a national coalition, on broader policy issues in relation to how other organizations in other jurisdictions have addressed funding and other challenges.

There were ongoing efforts during the past year to explore funding options with the provincial government, and that will continue during the coming year.

Southwest YES submitted five different proposals during the past year to the provincial government as a means to find a way to secure funding for Dorie’s House within the existing funding structure.

“One of the more exciting proposals that we put to government was this idea of an interagency proposal, where each ministry puts in a small amount of money to help run it, and then there’s no burden of funding,” he said. “We’re talking about a funding position of less than $300,000 a year to operate Dorie’s House, and when you spread it out amongst three or four ministries that seems like a do-able option, but the issue then of course is how does that work within existing policy frameworks.”

All five proposals were eventually turned down, and in all cases the motivation was the government’s current lack of resources to fund such a facility.

“The one thing they did make very clear is that they were very interested in this idea of an inter-agency approach, because it helps to keep the cost of funding to any one ministry down, and it also allows them to have that sort of larger approach to what services are needed and required,” he said. “So we’re going to revisit that and resubmit a new proposal later in August that’s structured around that and see where we get, and whether or not anything comes out of it. It’s a very exciting kind of idea, because I think the people that are in those positions to make those decisions are starting to recognize the value in this sort of system.”

Dorie’s House was open for eight months during 2017 as a pilot project to highlight the need for such a service in southwest Saskatchewan, but the doors of the eight-bed facility had to close due to lack of funding. According to Hanna the cost to operate Dorie’s House will be up to $360,000 per year, but their funding requests to the provincial government will not exceed 80 per cent of the overall cost.

“The reason for that is we believe our community should still have a horse in the race,” he said. “We believe that if it’s a priority for our community to solve it, that there should be that sort of financial piece that we go out and fundraise and seek sponsorship so that it is still part of the community and it’s in part directed by that community mentality.”

The largest expense to operate the shelter will be staff salaries. The long-term goal will remain to reduce the level of government funding, but initially it is a challenge to come up with that amount of money to keep the shelter open year after year. Southwest YES wants to avoid a situation where lack of secure funding will cause a cycle of opening, closing and reopening the shelter.

The Southwest YES members remain convinced of the need for Dorie’s House. Hanna personally experienced this at three occasions during the past year, when he was doing work in the house and youth knocked on the door to ask if they were open.

A one-year follow-up study with five youth who stayed at Dorie’s House during the pilot project indicated they were doing better than they were when they first accessed the shelter.

“However, of those five, there were two youths who are actually still actively looking for shelter,” he said. “They’re still either couch surfing or they’re not in a stable or safe housing environment.”

Community support for Dorie’s House is still strong, and he referred to some examples of donations that were made to Southwest YES. The 5th annual Run for Shelter in early June had 38 participants and raised over $3.200 and last fall’s 2nd annual Dorie’s House golf tournament raised over $6,700. He acknowledged that it can be a growing challenge to maintain community support and awareness when the shelter remains closed.

“When we were open, we were receiving closer to $2,000 a month in donations from the public and now, when it’s been closed for a year and a half, it’s more like $1,500 a month,” he said. “So there’s definitely an impact there. That’s always sort of top of mind.”

There will be an ongoing effort to create awareness in the community about Dorie’s House and the issue of youth homelessness in the southwest. He also cautioned that Southwest YES has always considered the initiative for a youth shelter to be a long-term project.

“Our 10-year plan for a capital build turned into a three-month happening where the community just got on board with that, and the community build us a house,” he said.

“So the thing that I like to remind people is that we’re still about seven years ahead of schedule in that sort of time frame. It’s unfortunate that although we have the house and we’re ready to go, that we haven’t been able to progress seven years faster that we liked to, but we’re still working on it.”

Although the doors of Dorie’s House remain closed, the Southwest YES board members are still positive about the future of the shelter.

“We’re always hopeful, for sure,” he said. “I mean, we’re frustrated that things aren’t progressing as fast as we would like them to. The word that we often use around the table is cautiously optimistic.”