Homeless centre worried Windsor's new housing hub location could sever 'vital connection'

The director of a homeless drop-in centre in Windsor, Ont., is concerned with the location of the city's new housing hub.

Christine Wilson-Furlonger calls the link between the current temporary hub at Water World and her centre, Street Help, a "vital connection" that she thinks could now be severed. Both are located along Wyandotte Street on the east-side of the core.

The city announced Tuesday plans for a $50-million project to put up 64 supportive housing units on 2.8 hectares of land on Wellington Avenue on Windsor's west-side along with access to social services.

City staff explored roughly 200 properties before settling on the Wellington Avenue space which will require expropriation after an initial attempt to purchase the land was unsuccessful.

"I'm deeply concerned about the potential disruption and hardship it could cause to the homeless community," said Wilson-Furlonger.

"If it's moved 22 blocks away from where Street Help is located, many individuals who rely on the homeless hub equally depend on Street Help's meal service."

She says the added distance could also make it more difficult on disabled senior citizens who access programs.

"Most of the current programs for the homeless are right in the downtown core. This is 22 blocks from our place alone, and a number of blocks from other services that they're not used to."

Bryan Rock with Family Services Windsor-Essex says he likes where the hub will be located and what it will offer.

He says homelessness in the city is not only a downtown issue; therefore, it doesn't have to be directly inside the core calling it a "community-wide problem."

"One of the things we find with our outreach team is services are centralized in the downtown core," he said.

"That's why the majority of people come to the core. It's less of a matter that the facility has to be right downtown. It needs to be close enough where people can access it. Having it close to downtown is more important than having it be right in the heart of downtown."

Family Services Windsor-Essex is a non-profit charitable organization that offers counselling and support services.

3 years too long?

Windsor's new transitional housing hub will take a minimum of three years to get up and running, according to city staff.

And that's three years too long, according to Wilson-Furlonger, who says it's "ridiculous" for it to take that length of time to build64 units for people to stay in.

"I'm sorry. They needed it yesterday. Three years is life or death for many people. Many people die in under a year. That's why it's urgent. It's critical that we get people into a home."

She says life on the streets is hard and unpredictable bringing with it "symptoms of homelessness," like high levels of anger and anxiety.

"It involves your vulnerability to predators and involves your mental health. You collapse as a person out there. You then lose your mind very quickly. And that's critical to survival."

Rock says the point of a housing first program isn't just to give someone keys to a place and say, 'here you, now you have housing.'

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A lot of people need wraparound support, he says, and intensive case management to make sure they're learning those life skills and a fully integrated hub like that takes time.

He says finding the right space and enough of it is critical to long term solutions.

"We all know the Water World location is not sufficient. It is not big enough. Looking at all of the encompassing services they do want to put on site I think being mindful and having the right plan is more important than just building something somewhere just to have it now.

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Rock says having multiple services in one location gives people the ability to walk through one door and access everything they need.

"The fact that it's not in the heart of downtown isn't as much of an issue as having all of those community organizations be represented under one roof, so that if you're coming for mental health, if you're coming for addiction support, if you're coming for income support, you don't have to go to five different locations."