VANCOUVER — Homeless or troubled women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside often find the daytime hours the hardest to bear.
It’s that 9-to-6 interval between when they are forced to leave emergency shelters in the morning and when shelters reopen again at night.
But today the Union Gospel Mission closed the gap as it opened its Women’s Day Shelter at 616 East Cordova.
There is now space for 12 single women and two women with children in the facility that will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday.
The shelter will provide private rooms with beds for women who are homeless or fleeing violence, elderly women requiring more rest, women recently released from hospital with no place to live, and women with addictions which account for 97 per cent of Vancouver’s sex trade workers of which there are 1,000 in the downtown area.
It will also provide a hot lunch.
“While the notion of a shelter during the day might seem odd it is meeting a critical need,” said Barbara Atkins, manager of the UGM’s Women and Families Centre.
“Every morning at 9 a.m. vulnerable women and sometimes their children are put out on the street,” said Atkins.
“Many of these women are sick or elderly or abused. Providing a safe, consistent and private place of refuge will alleviate suffering for women and children and help them take the next step toward greater health and provision,” said Atkins.
The women using the new facility will be brought over from the overnight shelter run by the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre known as the 412 Shelter located at 412 East Cordova.
This shelter which has space for up to 50 women does not have the capacity to allow them to remain during the day.
The new centre is a pilot project to determine the needs of homeless women in the area and was developed in conjunction with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
When the UGM shelter closes the women will be taken back to the DEWC to spend the night.
UGM spokesperson Keela Keeping said the shelter has the capacity to take in more women and staff will spend the next three months assessing the need.
“What’s important is that now these women are being assisted and cared for around the clock,” she said.
Keeping said staff will be available to help women put their lives back together so that with help they will reach a point of self-sufficiency where they will no longer need the UGM’s services.
“That’s the desired outcome,” said Keeping.
She said they hoped that with help the women could find stable and safe housing, employment, recovery from addiction, restored relationships and spiritual wholeness.
It will cost about $300,000 to run the centre for a year.
Since 2007 the UGM has been actively researching how best it could help women struggling with homelessness, poverty and addiction, Keeping said.
Shelter space in the Downtown Eastside was minimal – only 114 beds for women in 2011, she said.
The availability was scarce compared to the need, and there was little or nothing for women accompanied by children, said Keeping.
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