Three and a half years ago, before the city’s 10-year Housing and Homelessness Plan was implemented, there were five shelters in the city for individuals to access, three of which were specifically for women. Today, only two remain: Interval House for women seeking refuge from abuse, and Home Base Housing’s "In From The Cold" emergency shelter — the logic being that the implementation of the plan would resolve chronic homelessness, therefore justifying the closure of the other three.

In an article on Global news on Feb. 6, 2018, Home Base Housing program manager Colleen McAllister is cited as saying, "a lack of space within the city’s shelters is definitely not the problem," and she continued to share that at the time, 21 of the shelter’s 29 beds were available for use.

If shelter space is not the issue, then why do we consistently see so many people sleeping in bank entrances, church steps, air vents, tent cities, 24-hour restaurants, and parks around our beautiful city?

From my recent experience as a social worker, in contact with the homeless population, a reason many of our community’s homeless are not spending the night in the shelter system is because they are in fact restricted access to the shelter system. What the public may not know, and what shelter statistics may not reflect, is that In From The Cold emergency shelter restricts access for a variety of reasons.

A primary reason for restriction is given under the claim that the shelter is following the city’s mandate laid out in the 10-year Housing and Homeless Plan, which states by 2018 the average shelter stay should be a maximum of 14 days, and by 2023, seven days. Because of this approach, the community’s homeless population are given a set number of days to find housing within Kingston’s tight housing market.

Individuals are also denied access if a non-medically trained shelter staff deem them to be too medically complex.

What’s more, there are no emergency shelters for individuals who live outside the city limits (such as Amherstview, Gananoque or Napanee); if they come to Kingston to seek shelter, they are denied access because they do not technically live in the city.

For those experiencing homelessness, who are marginalized and vulnerable, often living with complex trauma, mental illness, addiction and disability affecting their functioning, we as a community need to do better. We need a more compassionate and have a more realistic approach. Dependable access to basic shelter is the first step, which is in line with what our prime minister espouses, that "housing rights are human rights."

Tyson Kellermann

Kingston

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