NEW SHELTER PROPOSED IN AFTERMATH OF PANDEMIC
Mayor says the city must do a better job of tackling the problem of homelessness
It took a pandemic, but Mayor Drew Dilkens says Windsor must do better helping people experiencing homelessness.
The mayor is proposing a new homeless shelter that would also provide mental-health care, job skills and other services to better address the problem.
“What the crisis has laid bare for me is that we have a need to tackle the homeless issue in the city of Windsor,” he said Tuesday. “We need to do a better job and allocate some money that’s going to help address this problem in the longer term.
“We need to take a holistic approach — shelter services tied to health and mental-health services and skills development,” he said.
It could be a new or retrofitted building, but he estimated it would cost $10 million to $20 million to “do it right.” The city could consider issuing debt to pay for it. Dilkens also sees a new shelter as an economic development initiative.
“If you really want to reboot downtown, I can’t do it unless I start dealing with some of the things we see playing out in the streets now,” he said, referring to people panhandling and sleeping in the streets.
He doesn’t want the shelter downtown, he emphasized.
It must be in a location “that makes sense for the community, that isn’t going to be negative in terms of economic development,” he said.
The city would issue an RFP (request for proposal) for a partner to operate the shelter. Dilkens doesn’t want to “pre-judge” who the operator would be, he said, but he suggested it won’t be the Downtown Mission, which already operates the biggest shelter in Windsor, with 103 beds.
“Certainly my level of trust in the mission is very, very low, so I have a difficult time dealing with them just from past history,” he said.
The mission bought downtown land at Ouellette Avenue and Elliott Street to build a headquarters.
It originally bought the former library on Ouellette but then, in a controversial move, sold it to a businessman when it couldn’t afford the purchase and renovation.
“I agree with the mayor that we need services for people experiencing homelessness,” said mission executive director Ron Dunn.
That was the plan for the former library, he said.
He said he’s open to locations outside downtown. Some of the mission’s largest donors have told him they don’t want the mission to build downtown.
He admitted that “some mistakes may have been made” regarding the former library, but “the city needs us and we need the city.”
The city must take the lead on a new shelter, Dilkens said.
“We’re the ones that have the biggest vested interest,” he said, “and we’re the only ones that would have the money to be able to create the model that will give everyone the best chance for success.”
Dilkens said he is talking to councillors about the idea, and hopes council will ask city staff for a report on what is needed and how much it would cost.
“I don’t have all the answers today,” he said, “but I know there are challenges that would be our responsibility to try to find solutions for.”
Downtown Coun. Rino Bortolin called the city’s current efforts to address homelessness “piecemeal” and said the city needs a “beginning to end service.”
“The goal is to successfully transition everyone into housing,” he said.
“We know it won’t be 100 per cent successful. But we have over 200 people who are chronically homeless. If we can get that down to 30, it would be a huge success.”
The city has faced new challenges with homeless people during the pandemic, Dilkens said.
Some homeless people began riding city buses all day and sleeping on them when it was cold outside and libraries and community centres were closed.
“We ended up having a really big problem,” he said.
The city then opened the gym at Water World for homeless people during the day.
The city booked all 29 rooms at the icheck Inn Motel on Howard Avenue so homeless people with COVID-19 could self-isolate instead of returning to crowded shelters.
But, said Dilkens, “if you’re suffering from an addiction, you’re not going to stay in your hotel room even if I’m bringing you your meals, because you need to feed the addiction. And there are other mental-health challenges. It has the ability to really ravage a part of your population that is vulnerable.
“Our system is ill-equipped to handle those types of challenges,” he said.
Even before the pandemic, the city was spending $500,000 a year to temporarily house people in motels.
Although the city is spending $12 million building affordable housing at Meadowbrook and commissioned a review of homeless shelters, the issue “hasn’t been one of those things that has risen to the top of the priority list because there have always been other priorities,” he said.
However, he said, “this one I don’t think you could set aside for much longer.”