This Ontario city is on a mission to end homelessness by 2027. Here’s how it’s going
this is part of the story hometown editionA special series broadcast on CBC Radio as it happens 3-7 November, Showcasing the struggles and triumphs of Canada’s small towns. listen here To learn more about what’s happening in St. Thomas, Ontario.
When Sarah Pepper was living on the streets of St. Thomas, Ontario, a few years ago, she says there wasn’t much in the way of support.
“It wasn’t a place to be homeless, that’s for sure,” Pepper said. as it happens Host Nil Koksal.
“There weren’t a lot of open doors, there weren’t a lot of services offered and, socially, people didn’t understand it.”
Now, thanks to the city’s aggressive plan to end long-term homelessness, Pepper has a roof over her head and a warm bed to sleep in every night as she puts the pieces of her life back together.
And if things go according to plan, within two years no one will be alive long term On the streets of St. Thomas.
as it happens8:19A look at an Ontario city’s ambitious plan to end homelessness
St. Thomas is a city in southwestern Ontario with a population of approximately 46,000. For 44 years, the local Ford plant was the town’s main economic driver, until its closure in 2011.
Like many towns and cities across Canada, St. Thomas finds itself facing three overlapping crises: a housing shortage, an opioid epidemic, and the rise of homelessness.
It kept Mayor Joe Preston up at night. But these days, with A Volkswagen electric battery plant on the way And with an anti-homelessness plan showing concrete results, he tells Koksal, he’s feeling optimistic.
“We’re at the peak. We’re moving forward,” Preston said. “We are solving a problem before many other cities in Canada.”
For almost five years now, the city has been working on a strategy to get people off the streets and into housing, based on the Canadian Coalition to End Homelessness’s national program. built for zero program,
St. Thomas has partnered with the province, federally, community organizations and non-profits to not only increase shelter space, but also rapidly move people out of shelters and into supportive housing with outreach services like counseling, health-care and more.
Danielle Nielsen, manager of housing stability services for the St. Thomas-Elgin region, says it’s important to understand that while emergency shelters are important, they are not the solution to the homelessness crisis.
“This is somewhere that, in my humble opinion, we have been going wrong for decades,” Nielsen said. “The solution to homelessness has always been housing.”
So far it seems to be working.
Last year, St. Thomas announced it had reduced long-term homelessness – meaning people who are homeless repeatedly or for extended periods of time – up to 30 percent,
The city says it will have enough shelter spaces this winter to accommodate about 130 people who are still living on the streets.
Additionally, it says it is on track to meet its goal of ending chronic homelessness in St. Thomas by 2027.
“We call it the ‘functional’ end of homelessness, because you can never stop it from happening,” Nielsen said. “But what you need to do is create a system where … you’ve essentially cleared the bottleneck.”
This means that, although people continue to be homeless, they do not stay that way for long. It also means that once its goal is achieved the city cannot rest on its laurels.
“We also know that we cannot stop there,” he said. “(Or) you will get stuck in the same hurdle again.”
Pepper’s Journey
Pepper has been living in an assisted living unit for the past two years. Before that, he had spent four years on the streets of St. Thomas.
This is not the life he would have ever expected for himself.
“I got cocaine and it definitely distracted me,” he said. “My marriage fell apart and that kind of thing happened, and before I knew it I was on the street.”
At the time, the city’s only overnight shelter, the Inn Out of the Cold, operated out of the church basement only in the winter.
Pepper said, “We’ll go there, move our cots, we’ll have to set everything up and then get our sleep.” “We had to be out of there by six, I believe it was early in the morning. It was quite hectic. Very tiring.”
Today things are looking better.
The Inn is now a year-round, 24-hour municipal emergency shelter with its own dedicated space, providing three meals a day and health care and mental health support.
Pepper, meanwhile, lives in The Station, a subsidized supportive housing complex built in 2023 and operated by developer Indwell, a city charity.
She says having stable housing has made an “astronomical” difference to her life.
“Here, I can breathe a little. I’m guaranteed to have food. I have enough space to plan my future, you know?” He said. “It’s exhausting to spend every day trying to feed yourself, keep you warm or keep yourself comfortable in places where you can’t get out.”
Indwell also opened The Railway City Lofts in 2021, which helps people transitioning directly out of homelessness by providing addiction support, behavioral therapy, health care, and assistance with medication and food.
Work is going on in the city too building affordable houses, For those who are ready to transition out of assisted living and into some more independent housing, Nielsen saysIncluding tiny houses built by the local YMCA,
Project Tiny Hope arose from a partnership between YWCA St. Thomas-Elgin, Sanctuary Homes and Doug Terry Homes. These homes provide an alternative to the traditional affordable and supportive housing approach. CBC News got a look inside the homes and spoke with Doug Terry and Shelley Chowns of Doug Terry Ltd. at the grand opening.
But the biggest difference Pepper has seen over the past five years is change Approach.
“People are more willing to help, people are more willing to ask if you’re OK,” she said. “They seem to realize that we’re human.”
There’s still a lot more to do
Despite seeing so much progress, Pepper says she still faces barriers that make it difficult for people to move forward.
“The biggest thing I see is some kind of (missing) link between people experiencing homelessness and the people running the systems and programs. There aren’t a lot of people who have the experience, there aren’t a lot of people who can really empathize because they’ve never been there, you know?” He said.
She is calling on the city and Indwell and other services to offer more peer-led programs and employ people who have directly experienced homelessness.
Natasha Thuemler, Indwell’s The regional director says the charity’s staff come from “diverse backgrounds of both life and educational experience”.
“Organizationally, we aspire to maintain healthy therapeutic relationships with our residents so that those personal experiences staff disclose may not always be made public,” Thuemler told CBC in an email.
“Even our model of supportive housing does not meet everyone’s needs… Unfortunately, there are still gaps in the system so we work with sector partners and individuals to help advocate and ensure that all people’s health and housing needs are met.”
Pepper knows firsthand what a difference lived experience makes. She now volunteers with The Nameless, an anti-poverty mutual aid group in St. Thomas, where she runs a peer-support group focused on harm reduction.
“They know I understand. They don’t feel like they’re being judged,” she said. “When they can talk freely and openly, you have the opportunity to really help them from every angle, because you know the whole story.”
He is skeptical about whether St. Thomas will be able to achieve its goal of ending chronic homelessness within the next two years.
But Indwell’s latest housing project, she says, gives her hope.
Charity is currently in process Replacing the vacant Balaclava Public School 78 supportive housing units,
“If it can be successful in getting people into apartments, and then helping people maintain their apartments, then it could be perfect,” Pepper said. “It could really happen.”
