Driving through rural Ontario, it is not unusual to see signs with Christian messages surrounded by colourful leaves at this time of year. I was struck recently by one sign that read, “Harden not your heart”. As we were driving by this sign, we were also receiving updates from our shelter team that there were four overdoses happening at the same time.
We are starting to get ready for the Point in Time (PiT) count, which is a national coordinated effort to take a snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in one night. It is important to recognize the many ways that homelessness is increasing in our communities, especially for people just trying to cope as best they can. Encampments demonstrate that we no longer have an effective social structure response to homelessness.
Standing witness to the harshness of our world is painful and draws a deep lament – across the world, on the earth that sustains life, and in our own community. The lament is important, standing with eyes wide open as witness, and feeling the pain. If we don’t lament, this despair can turn into anger, into fear, or indifference.
University Ave (UA) Housing emerged out of the triple emergencies of Covid, high homelessness, and a severe opioid epidemic… The reality for those facing homelessness was becoming increasingly intense. The Working Centre was witnessing these issues through our work with St. John’s Kitchen, Street Outreach, and SOS. We spent 2019 trying to draw system attention to these issues, and by 2020 and the arrival of Covid we leaned in to create and deliver practical responses. We worked constantly to help draw attention to the fact that our current frameworks were no longer meeting the needs of this growing group of people experiencing homelessness.
At The Working Centre, we are forty some years into this work, feeling deeply rocked by the increasingly stark reality of people who are being left out of housing, people facing the deep dislocation of poverty, a lack of housing, a poison and highly addictive drug supply. Our hearts are broken apart and broken open over and over again as we stand witness to people facing increasing hardship.
This year’s Mayors’ Dinner focuses on Responses to Homelessness. We are pleased to celebrate the many diverse efforts it takes to make change happen in the face of the daunting, disturbing and often tragic realities we face as a community.
We have leaned in with everything we have as an organization, and have been on the front-lines of this tragedy, hardship and injustice.
Those of us responding directly to the day-to-day survival needs of increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness in our Region knew that we needed immediate action. A phone call to Fr. Toby Collins at St. Mary’s Church in downtown Kitchener led us to hosting a month-long people-sleeping-on-the-floor pop-up shelter for 200 individuals in November of 2019. Since then there have been many positive changes.
Every night this winter I have gone to sleep noticing the weather; thinking deeply of the growing number of people who are living without housing, living without shelter, alongside of those who are living without housing security.
The numbers of people make this reality palpable and urgent. The September 2021 Point in Time count documented 1085 people without access to housing. These numbers have names, and are people we see every day.
Our work, as it has been lived during the pandemic, has been hard and deep, relentless and beautiful, as we have stood with people who are left out in so many ways – of housing, of indoor spaces, of bathrooms, of safety, of work. Many of the updates in Good Work News reflect the breadth and depth of the activities we have engaged in, but these stories have not been enough to convey the depth of the numbers of people affected.
On September 20 we hosted a community barbecue and memorial at St. John’s Kitchen. A time to bring the community together before we end up back indoors. A time to mourn the many people we have lost since the start of COVID. We have been careful about these moments, not wanting them to be an event that spreads COVID. Only this fall have we started to believe that we could gather again somewhat safely, even as we know that the fourth wave is before us.
What a delight the day was – so feeding of the human spirit. We filled the Worth a Second Look parking lot, with people gathered in clusters across the large space, music playing, barbecue fired up, with the food line all socially distanced as people gathered for their lunch.
The Integrated Circle of Care is a fluid and collaborative approach followed by workers from different agencies weaving through St. John’s Kitchen. Within this approach, staff members from each agency are aware of their specific personal roles. However, the high level of collaboration between workers means that people can approach any worker, without knowing their agency association or specific role, and still receive support – either that worker will support the person directly, or they will introduce the person to another worker who can support the person more appropriately.
This approach makes relationships more natural and support more accessible. Workers from different agencies are easily approachable, meaning that people build relationships with multiple workers. Having relationships with different workers is important to a person’s support – it makes support from a trusted source easy to find, and means that people have a choice of worker to approach in any given situation.
In order to maintain a circle of care around a person, workers from different agencies ask for consent from the person for information to be shared between workers. Continuous communication between workers helps to ensure that people do not fall into gaps between services, and also that services are not duplicated.
