By Stephanie Mancini
Published September 2024
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. There are many more people staying with friends or couch surfing as people make space for people that they know.
One form of support that we have focused on in the past 5 years is to make sure that the people we meet are counted in these homelessness snapshots that are guiding policy, spending and access to available housing.
We usually focus our eye on the person before us – I am listening, you are cared for, how can I help you? We feel the numbers in the growing desperation, in the lack of opportunities for creative problem-solving, when we see the growing unwellness of so many people who are left out – wounds, infections, psychosis, seizures, diabetes, burns, the cycle of seeking drugs, the risk of drug poisoning/overdose, outbreaks of frustration and violence, the desperate withdrawal from addictions. Not all are active drug users, but it does speak to the dystopia of the situation when we see growing numbers of people who fall prey to these highly addictive drugs.
Each day throughout The Working Centre we see large numbers of people who feel invisible despite their resilient focus on survival. Here is a Working Centre reflection on the people we see and support. There are overlaps in these numbers as people are supported in multiple ways:
- St. John’s Kitchen sees 300-450 people per day; 2,000+ different people who are unhoused or precariously housed
- Our outreach teams work closely with over 600 people living precariously; and we can easily name over 250 people living outside or couch surfing
- Every day we prepare and serve over 700 meals; share 80 food hampers weekly; this is possible because of the 800,000 pounds of food from Waterloo Region Foodbank in a year
- 80 people who are part of our community died in the last year and a half
- Specialized Outreach Services, our concurrent mental health and addictions team, supports 960 people
- King Street Shelter supports 100 people at a time, 268 different people in a year; King Street Shelter has reversed its pattern – now 60 women and 40 men as we prioritize women without shelter; over 40 people ask us to keep them in mind when a bed becomes available
- Erbs Road Shelter supports 50 people at a time, 110 different people since we opened
- Our Job Search Resource Centre on Queen Street supported 5,000 different people last year. There are 40-50 new people a day right now, people who are urgently seeking enough income to pay for the housing they have.
The numbers reflect the fullness and help us to understand why the work is harder; as we stand witness to the kind of decline most cannot bear to see, or do not directly see on a daily basis. Looking for some breath on this reflection, I picked up a copy of the book we put together that reflects on Arleen Macpherson’s work with St. John’s Kitchen and The Working Centre over 30 years. The pace of the work used to be different, the desperation was not as palpable, but the approach and hopes are still the same. The cover of the book reflects a graphic by Andy Macpherson. The small print describes St. John’s Kitchen – a beautiful wild community born of grace, dignity, trust, hope, serendipity, Loss and Resilience, compassion and empathy, generosity, mutuality, hardship and pain, awe and mystery, a pragmatic response that is not afraid. Then the larger image boldly states – We flourish and blossom when we give and receive love and understanding.
Our hope is that this vision carries us through this time, one person at a time.
