Mayors’ Dinner Remarks by Joe Mancini
Published June 2023
How did the numbers of homeless grow so rapidly in the last 5 years?
Here are some of the underlying social factors that are contributing:
- By 2013 the gathering forces of industrial synthetic drug production broke out from the margins making powerful drugs like fentanyl and crystal meth widely and cheaply available.
- Sky high rents are leaving many out of the housing market. The definition of despair is having a $600 social assistance cheque when the cost to rent a room is $800.
- Take a second to reflect on the obvious correlation between cheap drugs and expensive housing.
- Add to this, the fallout from high tech jobs. Factory work formerly paid good wages to thousands of workers. The main qualification was to endure the work. With this work no longer available, certain parts of the labour force have been left out, and the disconnection from meaningful work has been devastating.
On Nov 11, 2019, during a major snow storm, The Working Centre moved mountains to open a warming centre at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Over 2 weeks 225 different people used the shelter. We knew who each of these individuals were, they were all living without housing around the Kitchener downtown.
When we ended up at a vacant Tim Hortons we started integrating what was happening. How will people get housing? How did the numbers get so big? We had the example of people like Nikki, who will speak later this evening, demonstrating the commitment necessary to do 24/7 shelter work.
When the pandemic closed everything in March 2020, the ground at St. John’s Kitchen had changed. The encampments all around the 97 Victoria property made the reality of homelessness visceral. When our doors re-opened the most important work was providing indoor space, meals, washrooms, showers, laundry and water. This began a remarkable journey of effort and perseverance by workers committed to standing in the gap.
Out of the pandemic came money for motel rooms and soon 60 rooms were filled with over 80 people. A group that has changed over many times, but who have stayed off the street and received important medical care through this valuable resource.
In mid-August of 2020, the Region presented the opportunity to use a dorm residence on University Avenue as an interim housing project. We said yes immediately and by mid-October the place was occupied, mostly with people who had been camping around 97 Victoria. UA, as we call it, is a shining example of creating housing out of nothing. It is a place of relationships where people adapt from the street, seeking stability while dealing with significant mental health and addiction challenges.
A year later, we hosted an emergency shelter at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian. It was a time of grace, providing a refuge in the winter as the pandemic finally loosened. Now this low barrier shelter at the former Schwaben Club welcomes couples, pets, with 100 people making this a 24/7 temporary home.
No one involved will forget this past Christmas, when 150 people sought shelter during the Christmas Eve snow storm and the King Street Shelter opened its doors wide.
The Erbs Road Shelter will add 50 cabins to the existing shelter options, yet there are more than one hundred people who could move in.
All together The Working Centre’s creative work has opened more than 300 24/7 beds helping hundreds of people from the streets into shelter.
The flashing sign of Homelessness throughout North America calls us to understand the interplay between:
- the widespread use of drugs and other addictions,
- the lack of on the ground support for mental health and trauma,
- the reality of unaffordable rents and,
- the abandonment of grassroots job support.
Drug use, mental health, high rents, and the lack of alternative work are a reflection on the society we come from. There is no way to deny the interrelatedness.
We have seen at St. John’s Kitchen and our shelter work the desperate importance of walking with, of helping people make sense of their abandonment, of dealing with family breakdown, of pushing to find access to services.
The work of carving out places of healing, the building of integral connections, is about hope. It is a journey, fraught with setbacks when there are few housing alternatives.
We’ve seen the challenges and joys of this good work and we acknowledge and appreciate all the people who make this work possible.
