Homelessness committee presents to council

LEAMINGTON — The Leamington Homelessness Committee recently conducted a survey of the municipality’s homeless population and they’ve brought the results of that survey to Leamington Council.

At the Tuesday, July 13 meeting, Alissa Enns and Carolyn Warkentin addressed council with a Powerpoint presentation outlining the struggles and barriers that the homeless face in the community.

According to the presentation, the average monthly costs of housing someone while homeless are quite eye-opening.

If that person is in hospital, the average cost of housing them is over $10,000. If they are incarcerated, the average cost is about $4,300 per month. A shelter bed costs an average of $1,932 a month, while rental supplement would cost the governments about $701 a month and social housing even less at about $200 a month.

In Essex County, there are no emergency housing options for those experiencing homelessness, and there is also a lack of homelessness services and the barriers for accessing shelter in the city are greater in the county.

Of those experiencing homelessness in Canada today, about 80 per cent are experiencing what is called ‘hidden homelessness.’

“These are people who are living temporarily with others but without guarantee of continued residency,” said Enns. “Nor do they have prospects for accessing permanent housing.”

These people would include people who are couch surfing with friends or family, those who have been incarcerated with nowhere to go once released, and those living in cars, church properties, hotels, motels and abandoned buildings.

Enns says that homelessness takes on a different look in the county.

“Navigating homelessness in the county is vastly different from homelessness in the city,” she said. Mayor Hilda MacDonald agreed. “Their (Windsor’s) numbers are much higher and the homeless population has been much more visible,” she said.

Enns and Warkentin then provided the data from their recent survey.

There were 72 respondents to the survey. Of the 72 homeless people to respond, 41 were housed in one way or another, but 73 per cent of those were worried that they were going to lose their arrangements for shelter.

The 31 remaining respondents had no place to call home at all, with 17 of them being absolutely homeless and 14 of them ‘hidden homeless.’

The Homelessness Committee is hoping that Leamington will enact some homelessness programs to help, as well as advocate to upper levels of government for funding and resources.

“Now that we have this data, we can ask for some help from our partners at the city,” said MacDonald. “Thank you for this.”

Currently, all resources from upper levels of government go to the City of Windsor and then are doled out to the neighbouring municipalities.

Enns and Warkentin would like to see the municipality work with local stakeholders to establish a ‘made in Leamington’ solution, which would include developers, community services and businesses.

A big part of that will be sustainable, affordable and transitional housing — something that council has been looking at with the old LDSS property on Talbot Street West.

Alissa Enns says the final report will be forthcoming, and that final report will help local officials make the decisions necessary to help alleviate a lot of the barriers and challenges in this area.