A new facility in Morinville, Alta., is helping meet the growing need for safe spaces for domestic violence survivors.
“We can house a family of up to five people at one time, so we’re averaging anywhere between 12 and 15 people that we can support in total,” said Marla Poelzer, executive director of the Jessica Martel Memorial Foundation.
The space is called Eileen’s Place, a three-unit, second-stage affordable housing program that will help domestic violence survivors with education and career goals and transition them to independent living.
Families and individuals can stay there anywhere from three months to two years.
Eileen’s Place adds on to Jessie’s House, an emergency shelter created in memory of Jessica Martel, a 26-year-old mother who was murdered by her spouse in front of her three children in 2009 after trying to leave.
Her mother, Lynne Rosychuk, created the Jessica Martel Memorial Foundation in 2012 and opened Jessie’s House in 2020.
She explained opening Eileen’s Place is a dream come true.
“There’re thoughts in my mind that go back to Jessica and how if this place would have been here when she was here, what a beautiful place that she would have had to be safe and be able to live her life with her three children,” said Rosychuk.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for her, but she is sure smiling down on being able to help so many families.”
According to Poelzer, the need for spaces like these is high.
“Last year we had 2,000 calls for admissions into Jessie’s House, which is astonishing. It’s not a number we like to share,” said Poelzer.
“We were able to bring in about 198 adults and about 200 kids last year. So far this year, we’ve received 519 calls for support. That’s just from January. We were able to bring in 38 adults and 42 children.
“Before Eileen’s Place opened, so far this year we’ve already made seven referrals to second-stage housing,” said Poelzer.
She explained those numbers could be attributed to the pandemic.
“What the pandemic did is it forced people to stay in their situations a lot longer, so now people that did stay in those situations during pandemic have started to leave. So, we’re going to see those numbers probably high for quite some time,” said Poelzer.
Eileen’s Place is named after Eileen LaBonte, an advocate and donor for the foundation.
“People need a place to go when they leave the house. A lot of times they don’t have any money, don’t have an I.D., they don’t have anything,” said Labonte. “I just want people to know that there are people and organizations that will help them … and that they’re not alone.”
Eileen’s Place allows people to move out of emergency shelters sooner and get into affordable housing faster.