A more proactive approach is being taken by the municipality and its partners to build community support through education in ending homelessness in Chatham-Kent.
The multi-media campaign #CKCares was launched Nov. 17 through www.letstalkchatham-kent.ca to provide a place where residents can learn more about the issue of homelessness.
“I think when we demystify homelessness and show how easy it can happen, it does create interest,” said Polly Smith, director of employment and social services.
She also believes there already is a lot of interest in the issue, but people just don’t know what to do about it.
“If we have more community members involved with us, we can be having new conversations about housing … because we need more housing for people that is affordable,” Smith said.
Renee Geniole, operations coordinator at ROCK Missions, a volunteer outreach organization that locates and builds relationships with homeless people, said there is community interest.
She said homelessness is more visible today, citing people walking in public wrapped in a blanket as an example.
“The conversations have already started,” Geniole said.
She added it is time to expand the conversation and make it bigger.
Loree Bailey, general manager of Chatham Hope Haven, said the organization has offered a day program since 2019 and for four years prior was the only overnight emergency shelter in Chatham-Kent.
“I believe that has given us a pretty good understanding of this community and of those being without housing in this community,” she said.
Bailey has also taken time to get to know and understand people who are homeless.
“If you don’t have the time to do that then at least don’t let the stigma of who you think they are, get in the way of how you treat them,” she said.
Mayor Darrin Canniff said, “It takes a community to solve this problem.”
He said if everyone understood homelessness and what drives it, and if “we get rid of some of those stereotypes, it makes it a lot easier to work towards solutions.”
A major solution is providing more affordable housing.
Canniff said if Chatham-Kent had 1,000 more affordable housing units it would have a significant impact on homelessness.
He noted more people have become homeless over the last year that never thought this would happen to them, because of rents increasing by hundreds of dollars a month, making it unaffordable for many to pay rent and buy groceries.
“We need people to understand that when we’re building affordable housing (units), it has to happen,” Canniff said. “If you want people off the street, that has to happen, we have to build those homes.”
The need for services including emergency homeless shelters is also a crucial part of helping people facing homelessness.
“We want people to learn more about homelessness so they are more open to the work we are doing to end it,” Smith said.
She said social services is seeing at least three people a week who have never used emergency housing services before, having to access emergency housing at Victoria Park Place, the former elementary school on Murray Street that opened earlier this year.
In 2021, about 500 residents in Chatham-Kent experienced homelessness, Smith said.
She added in October there were 21 individuals housed through the various municipal programs, but 17 people also fell into homelessness for the first time.
However, there’s been a positive trend in homeless numbers since the transition to emergency homeless shelter at Victoria Avenue Place.
The “by name list,” which is the number of people known by social services to be homeless, decreased to 98 last month from around 200 a year ago, said Josh Myers, program manager with employment and social services.
He added the number of chronic homeless people – those who have been homeless for six months or more – dropped to 54 in October.
Myers said the decline in chronic homeless people in Chatham-Kent is better than other communities in Southwestern Ontario are experiencing.
But social services is very aware of what the future may hold as high rents continue to impact people, he added.
“Without larger, systemic changes with respect to housing and supports, there are a lot of people in our community who are struggling and are just on the cusp homelessness or the cusp of falling back into (homelessness),” Myers said.