Well that didn’t take long.
Only a few short weeks after Citizen reporter Robert Barron interviewed officials about how things were going at the newly opened emergency shelter for women, and learned that at that time it was operating at about half full, it’s now having to turn people away.
With 15 beds, available exclusively to women, it operates in addition to the 45 beds available at Warmland House between its regular shelter and the extreme weather shelter. It begins to give us an idea of the scope of the homelessness problem in the Cowichan Valley. It’s not a problem we can ignore and it will go away.
Ideally, folks using the homeless shelters will move on to more sustainable housing situations. But there are barriers, and one can read the frustration between the lines when talking to someone like Debbie Berg, executive director of Cowichan Women Against Violence Society, which runs the women’s shelter.
She told the Citizen that they’re seeing women use the shelter who would like to access further services such as counselling and employment programs to get themselves back on their feet, but right now they’re not funded or mandated to do that at the shelter.
That’s a real shame. One of the positive things about the shelter is that it can serve as a contact point to try to help people to get out of the cycle of homelessness. Growing waiting lists shouldn’t be what stands in the way. Often in such situations it’s important to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak, and someone is feeling motivated and able to change their lives.
Integration of services is vital to promote long-term solutions. We’re not doing as well as we can in that respect. While it’s a good thing to give people a place to stay so they don’t freeze to death when the temperature dips below zero, the ultimate goal has to be having them no longer need it. Otherwise, we will forever be stuck in the status quo where we triage a never-ending need.