London’s winter response to homelessness program might be ending for the season, but the city’s commitment to addressing the issue has not.
On Tuesday, the program operating temporary winter shelters, giving clients access to common space, bathrooms and other supports, at the Fanshawe Golf Course ended.
Between late November 2021 and earlier this week, roughly 30 people lived in construction trailers converted into small bedrooms on the city-owned property.
Craig Cooper, London’s director of housing stability, says since the program ended earlier this week, none of the participants have returned to unsheltered homelessness.
“We had about 18 individuals moved into permanent housing across the city. We have a number of locations that have supported folks, which is great to see, and a lot of it was based on their choice as well — they wanted to move to these locations,” Cooper said.
Cooper noted that a few people did have to transition into traditional shelters or private rooms in shelters in the interim.
“I think with anything, any model we run, you have to be flexible and there’s always hiccups and surprises along the way, but there’s there also always great successes,” he said.
“It’s great to see that the work that we’re doing and what we want to see across our sector is working. It worked for a good number of people. There are still some people challenged right there that didn’t get into the permanent housing for various reasons.”
For those who did not secure permanent housing for various reasons, Cooper said they were still able to get a lot of the other pieces they needed in place to take that next step when they are ready.
He noted that initial safety concerns surrounding the site never materialized and that some residents did not even notice that the program was happening in their neighbourhood.
“We didn’t have any significant challenges or very few, if any, calls for police. I know we had a number of folks that were able to stabilize and get the medical treatment that they needed. We had a lady in there with her boyfriend here ended up having a baby so that was probably the most unique thing that happened this year at the shelter,” he said.
Despite its success, the program is not expected to run again next year.
Instead, Cooper said the city will be renewing its focus on moving people into permanent housing.
The program was made possible because of emergency COVID-19 funding from the provincial and federal governments, which is not expected to be renewed again next year.
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Earlier this week, a city committee voted unanimously to recommend Mayor Ed Holder call on the upper levels of government to extend temporary COVID-19 funding for homelessness programs.
Ward 6 Coun. Maureen Cassidy said they are hopeful the funding will be expended and that the goal is for a more permanent funding stream to be put in place.
“We’ve seen how staff have been able to pivot because of COVID, the programs they’ve put in place, including the Winter Response Program, which has brought a lot of people in from the cold and also helped to transition them towards more permanent housing,” Cassidy.
“So there have always been people sleeping rough on our streets, people living unsheltered, and there has always been an affordable housing crisis in the city of London. COVID brought it out into sharp relief and made it worse, and so we do really need some targeted approaches and we need the funding from the other levels of government as well to solve these problems.”
— with files from Global News’ Natalie Lovie
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