By Stephanie Mancini
Published March 2023
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.
We have watched every community across Canada grappling with the issues of a lack of affordable housing, growing encampments and the challenges of creating indoor spaces during our coldest/hottest months that offer viable housing/shelter options for people facing the complexities of a toxic drug supply, trauma, mental health issues and dislocation.
We have deep issues to resolve as a community, and we have joined with government and community partners to creatively respond and reflect on the social questions of how we use land, how we include complex people in our neighbourhoods, how we find the money to respond in both the short-term (shelter/interim housing options, indoor spaces that offer responses to extreme weather, washroom access) and the long-term (affordable/supportive housing and mental health/substance use supports that help people to strengthen once they are housed).
We have been overwhelmed by the numbers who struggle to find housing each night. The workers at the front door of our King Street Shelter were overwhelmed every evening when people lined up, hoping to be let in. Every night there were more than 20 people who were not able to access a bed.
It was a great relief when the renovations at the King Street shelter were completed in December and we were able to convert to a 24/7 shelter for 100 people, who could be guaranteed a bed each night. We were immediately at capacity and saw many others hoping to find a place in our shelter.
On Christmas Eve during the harshest snow storm of the year, the doors were opened wide, everyone was welcomed from the freezing wind and snow. Soon there were 150 people in the shelter. It was a special Christmas where we shared the space in the most Christmas way imaginable.
While this open door was important during Christmas, we were glad to return back to 100 people after the storm. It is impossible to imagine how complex it is to host 100 people in a congregate space, where people sleep side by side, in dire circumstances. Easy for fights to emerge, as we respond to a toxic drug supply that leads to drug poisonings/overdoses, welcoming EMS/police as a regular part of our work. Despite this complexity and less than ideal situation, we have people requesting access every day.
But there is beauty and community too! One or our workers recently reflected on what it is to come in to work each day, knowing the joys and hardships before us. Shelter in the winter means that one minute we are first responders in life-and-death overdoses, and then we turn around and feel the joy of people making music together. It is a work of love and bravery, this work of providing shelter.
We build relationships of care and connection, and we face, time after time, the loss of people who are dear to us as they succumb to overdose from a toxic drug supply. This past week we saw the death of two people who are very dear to us as a community; the wound of this loss building on the loss of so many people before them.
The cycle of life happens around us as we support women who are pregnant and hope to rebuild their lives as they seek to keep this child. Supporting people who viscerally feel the regret and tragedy of estranged children. Families torn apart by the loss.
We welcome pets, helping people maintain that sense of companionship. Recently we walked with one person through the death of their long term friend, a dog who was really the shelter’s dog – he stayed with us even when we had to ask his owner/parent to leave for a day/week as we navigated interpersonal conflict in the shelter. The same week that we marked the loss of this little one, Powder, we also witnessed the birth of puppies. A woman staying in her car left her dog with us just before the puppies were born. Complex moments.
Even before COVID, The Working Centre was harnessing our organizational capacity to address the urgent needs of homelessness. In the midst of the pandemic we recognized the importance of addressing hunger, shelter/housing and drop-in supports in new ways. We created a commissary kitchen for producing 700 meals per day. We doubled the shelter system by adding 60 motels rooms, 80 interim dorm units, and a year round 100 person 24/7 emergency shelter. We maintained the services of St. John’s Kitchen as an important hub throughout the pandemic.
The work is daunting, the challenges feel quite relentless. There are so many dear moments in the midst of the work, but we are standing in a place of witness of many injustices that should not be happening. This work breaks our hearts open time and time again as we insist on continuing to offer love and welcome as the best response.
Recently one of the King Street Shelter residents moved away to access housing and he called to let us know how he was doing. We heard his gratitude – because you cared, because you showed up every day, even the day after some really hard days, because you know me as a person – you helped me to see myself as important and take the next step in my life.
We work to be present in the current moment, while also building forward on a vision of more housing, more care, and building in action the kind of society that we want to be part of.
